


Five Months at Freddy's

by CaptainExtremis



Category: Five Nights at Freddy's
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anime Powers, Blood, CaptainEx headcanons the shit out of everybody, Coarse Humor, F/M, Gen, Illustrated, Mike is fueled by nothing but Pepsi, Paranormal, Sarcasm, Toy Bonnie is a gay little goof but he tries, and stale memes, and subsequently getting ultra-salty over boardgames, bonding over boardgames, but he doesn't look like Nightmare, but with other guards taking Mike and Jeremy's places, fyi Malcolm's the name I gave Nightmare, he's a tired old ghost grandpa, let him rest, modern slang, modern tech, slice-of-life, slice-of-life interlaced with action, spiritual possession, the games happened in the chronological order that the fandom has accepted
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-07
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2018-08-28 22:59:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 46,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8466256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainExtremis/pseuds/CaptainExtremis
Summary: Mike Schmidt and Jeremy Fitzgerald land themselves jobs as security guards for Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria. That's nothing new at this point.
What is new is that the resident guardians of the pizzeria, reclusive old Fredbear and the mysterious Marionette, forcibly recruit them both into a secret agenda at least thirty years in the making. In exchange for being able to tap into the power of the "other side," Mike and Jeremy must now help the souls of some long-dead children find closure, in the form of hunting down their killer and delivering justice the old-fashioned way.
However, between a hardheaded manager, actually having no idea where the original murderer is, and homicides happening almost every other day, it's much easier said than done.





	1. Who Masters the Ringmaster?

Scalded. Abandoned. Left to rot.

The Black Burroughs used to be a welcoming place. A middle-upper class neighborhood that had everything a decent community needed: a clubhouse, golf course, nice apartments, swimming pools, and nice people. That was before the conflagration, though.

It figured how nothing in the middle of the mid-west could stay gold forever. At this point, it just seemed to be the natural order of things; whether by way of freak accident, riots, or the entropy of time, everything seemed to have its breaking point. After the raging inferno hit the community and everyone was evacuated, the gangs moved in before the police and civic engineers could get ahold of it; ever since then, it had been nonstop turf war. Some gangs prospered while many rose and fell over the years. It was long before Francisco’s time, so he didn’t much care.

He shuffled around on the streets, littered with old newspapers and cigarette butts, his only solace coming from the little guiding voice in his head. He knew where he had to go. At this point, he just wasn’t sure he could follow through very well.

_Ah, but that was the old you, my boy,_ said the voice. _You’re so much better than that now._

“You really think so, old man?” Francisco asked.

_By all accounts,_ the Old Man replied. Those small words of confidence helped bolster him to continue onward, taking a side-alley detour between two crumbling townhouses. He continued walking the path he remembered walking once before. Months ago, when he’d been completely on his own, he’d tried to fall in with a group that could provide at least some entertainment for him.

And in no time, he’d found his way back. There, painted on a bare brick wall, was a skull with green wings, and two daggers stabbed into it like a new-age skull-and-crossbones. He breathed in and strode out of the alley, toward the mural, and the two people standing guard in front of rusty metal door to the left.

They were all dressed in sickly shades of green, from the tossle caps to the baggy jeans and denim shorts. And as soon as they saw him coming, their hands, clutching pistols, twitched briefly before they recognized who was walking toward them. And they only sneered smiles in his direction.

“‘Ey, Val,” said one of them, “Looks who’s come crawlin’ back to us.”

Val snorted. “Never would’a dreamed it, after the beatin’ he got,” she scoffed.

Francisco ignored them, and stood right in front of them. There was a pause before the thug asked, “Okay, asshole, ya got our attention. Fuck you want?”

“...I’m here to re-apply,” Francisco said at langth.

The two thugs shared a confused glance, and Val stepped forward, shaking her finger and saying, “No can do, babe. Ya had yer chance, ya blew-”

“Aw, let’im in, sore-ass,” said the other one.

“What?”

The mook shrugged. “We let Arlo retry f’r entry, didn’ we?”

“Yeah, but he looked like he’d improved some,” Val said. “This fuckboy hasn’t even grown an inch.”

The thug shrugged. “...Maybe it’ll get a chuckle outta everybody. Sure made me laugh the first time,” he scoffed while looking at Francisco with a mocking smile.

Val and her friend stood there, Francisco glancing back and forth between them, half worried, half incredulous. “...A’ite,” Val said after a minute. “You wait here, ya little cocksucker, we’ll tell the boss to get things set up.”

“...’Kay.”

And with that, the two gangers disappeared inside, leaving Francisco alone with his thoughts.

* * *

He was pulled inside around forty-five minutes later, by completely different people, and marched forcefully through the hideout of “The Toxins.” Possibly the most prolific gang in the Burroughs, as they had yet to be ousted by a rival faction, content to let the others fight their wars, then swoop in to clean house. As such, only the strongest and hardest to kill were allowed into their ranks. It was why Francisco wanted to join in the first place, among other things.

He’d learned his lesson now. Now, he was ready.

What he was led to was a large space in the middle of the building. Several floors had collapsed, making a kind of multi-level circular theatre. In the center was a crudely-made wrestling arena, now surrounded by cheering “fans.” Beyond that were several seats, all occupied, one at the apex of all the others. Another reason The Toxins were so effective: it seemed only they had grasped that effective leadership made an effective workforce. All the other gangs practically met and acted like cabals with no general to lead them.

Francisco was led, then forcefully shoved into the center ring, to the approval of the cheering crowd. He stumbled and fell to his knees, which was also met with uproarious laughter. From  under the black hair combed over the right side of his face, he looked up at the chairs in the back, and the calm, but insidious man sitting at the highest chair.

He, in turn, looked down on Francisco and grinned. “Well, well,” he began melodramatically, “Never thought we’d see this sorry sack’a crap again, eh, fellas?” A large whoop came from the crowd, and while they cheered, Francisco scuffled his feet and stood up, and looked around while rubbing his arm. “Yeah, me neither,” he said. “Didn’t get your ass fucked hard enough last time, Cissy?”

“I…” Francisco breathed in, paused, and breathed out. “I came back to prove myself, Derrick.”

The entire building was silent for all of five second before everyone erupted into cacophonous laughter. Normally, Francisco would have covered his ears, like last time, but now, he knew to take it in stride.

“Woh, **wow,** holy **shit!”** Derrick guffawed. “Well, there ya got it, boys! A regular knight in shining armor.” After the mockery had died down a bit, Derrick continued, “Well, fuck, since you’re bein’ so damn honorable, how ‘bout you chose your opponent?”

Francisco paused to ponder a minute, which must have been what Derrick wanted when he shouted, “Damian, then?”

Francisco’s eyes went wide and his pupils shrunk. “...Please no…”

“Damian it is…!”

But it was too late. From out of the crowd, a burly black man stomped into the arena, everyone making room for him out of both fear and just how broad shouldered he was. He scoffed as he entered the arena, only needing to swing his legs over the railing. No effort to climb necessary. Damian immediately settled down into a wrestling stance with a malicious grin on his face while Francisco was desperately trying not to sweat too much.

“And…” Derrick paused for effect, and continued, “...Begin!”

Damian immediately charged forward, trying to tackle Francisco, and managed to side-swipe his ankle as he dodged. Francisco tumbled over to the side and almost rolled out of the arena. He struggled to his feet, and to his horror, saw Damian closing in on him, walking with confident swagger of a hunter seeing a rabbit trapped in a cage. “Couldn’t take tha hint, ya li’l punk-ass nigga?”

Francisco didn’t have time to respond as Damian lunged again, punching Francisco right in the nose. If it hadn’t been for the uproar of cheers, he might have been able to hear his own screams. He then hit the floor and was immediately and mercilessly set upon by Damian, who straddled his chest and began a flurry of punches to the face.

_I said you were better than this!_

Punch after punch, cracking against Francisco’s bones.

_You are my last, best hope!_

There was so much blood. Francisco could taste it, conglomerating in the back of his throat.

_Show them what you can do!_

The crowd’s roaring was growing fainter. This was the end.

_Let._

It was the story of his life.

_Me._

...He **hated** it.

**_Out...!_ **

An inhuman shriek rang out over the cracking knuckles and the crowd, and for one moment, there was confusion on Damian’s face before Francisco, his face bloody and his eyes now glowing a ghostly purple, grabbed his fist and punched back. The force alone, more powerful than a freight train, sent him flying up into the rafters, where he hit the ceiling, and fell back to the arena on his stomach.

In no time, Francisco launched himself jerkily to his feet, as if his body was being piloted, and still shrieking like a banshee, tore over to Damian, flipped him over, and turned the tables. Now _he_ was the one pummeling Damian to death, blow after blow, until there was nothing left of the man’s nose and blood was shooting out of the stump.

With one last scream, Francisco reached down and forced both his thumbs into Damian’s eyes. And then, latching onto his head, he pulled with all his might. If the man hadn’t died to the pummeling and the shock of landing on his stomach…

He was sure as hell dead when Francisco tore his head clean off his shoulders.

He was still screaming, but the crowd had long since gone silent, watching in awe and terror as a pipsqueak not only defeated a walking giant among men, but also proceeded to murder him in the most gruesome fashion possible. They all collectively winced again when, still not content with his victory, Francisco _tore Damian’s decapitated head in half down the middle._

And so, there he was. Breathing heavily, his face and sleeves drenched in blood. His hands, grey matter stuck to them, sloughing off slowly. On the ground, his first conquest, and the Old Man’s first victim in years. Needless to say, he was happy about it. It made Francisco smile too; maybe a little _too_ much.

Francisco turned his head, slowly, back to Derrick, to show off his grin. It covered nearly his entire lower face, almost literally “ear-to-ear.” Then, after a moment, he started chuckling. It was erratic, as if most of it was forced. To say Derrick wanted no part of it was a severe understatement.

“...Heeeyy, uh…” he stammered, “Cisco! Cisco, my buddy! You...you won! You’re in! Awesome!” Derrick was desperately praying he could get out of the room to change his shorts at the earliest possible convenience. “We’ll, uh...we’ll get the bitches’n’beer in a h-hot sec, just you wait! It’s gonna be a _huge_ party, you’ll love-”

_“Spare me, asshole.”_

Derrick stopped cold. “...What…?”

“Can it, assclown,” Francisco said again. “You still have something that belongs...to _me.”_ The man was whiter than a satin sheet as he looked around desperately, to both the council around him and to find what Francisco might be talking about. “Get off _my_ throne.”

He looked up, confused and terrified, at Francisco. “M...my...my _throne?”_

Francisco, despite still smiling grunted in annoyance, and pushed his palm out. Suddenly, a portal of inky black overtook Derrick’s chair and he began to sink in. To aid the process, hundreds of black hands shot out of the portal to grab him. They immediately went to muffle his screams, and everyone around him promptly freaked the fuck out. Francisco himself walked confidently forward, now smiling deviously and dictated, “Oh, don’t be such a pussy. Purgatory is a nice place!” Derrick’s eyes widened as he continued, “Sure, some of the inhabitants might be a little... _clingy,_ but other than that...it’s great down there.”

Francisco continued grinning as he watched Derrick’s terrified, pleading face disappear, and the void had retracted from the chair, as if it had never been there at all. Now content, he sat down and surveyed his new domain. They’d have to start work immediately. He had the workshop set up already, and after that, he could leave The Toxins well enough alone before they all decided to splinter off and join another gang where their chances being horribly butchered were slimmer.

Of course, he had to get into the restaurant and retrieve the Old Man’s prize first, and that would be...something. Something, indeed. “Could be worse,” he knowingly said out loud, “I could be forced to work with retarded chihuahuas. Though, a group of half-brained, shit-flinging chimps isn’t much a step above that, anyway.”

He paused tso that his new underlings could know what he thought of them (and damn well appreciate it, since hadn’t just barged in and slaughtered them all). “So, my friends, that leaves me one question,” Francisco chuckled...

“Who dares try and master the ringmaster?”


	2. Let's Get Back Into It

 

Sudney was “The City Founded on Family.” It wasn’t a large place, by any stretch of imagination. There was a downtown area with shopping malls and attractions that connected to several suburban areas. Probably the biggest draw was Hablo Pier, and that wasn’t saying much, considering it was just about the same as most other carnivals. But carnivals aren’t the point here. The point is, the sun was up and shining brightly. It shined over the whole city. Specifically, over an apartment building.

This apartment wasn’t special, either, but on the sixth floor there was room 63-A. It was being rented out to two people. One was a broad-shouldered black man with short hair and a soul patch. Rather outspoken, but he’d been able to get by. The other one was...well…

One of his eyes shot open upon reacting to the sun peeking through his blinds. He growled. Judging by how tightly the blinds had been folded together and wedged into the windowsill, he’d probably tried to make sure no sunlight would get in. Unfortunately, he didn’t calculate the angle of the sun very well.

After a minute of bitching and moaning to himself, he sat up. His countenance was pale; the beanpole of a man obviously didn’t get enough sun. His greasy black hair was strung out over his shoulders and his skin under his eyes was slightly discolored and purple. He groaned and rolled out of the air mattress and face first onto the floor, and it took several minutes to find the strength to get up and actually get dressed in a wife beater and blue jeans.

He trudged outside where he saw his roommate, in a polo and black jeans, sitting in front of their nineteen-eighties model TV, flipping through news channels. “Afternoon, Mike.”

Michael Schmidt, usually just “Mike,” swung his head to the side to look at the clock on the stove. Two-thirty.

_“Uuugh.”_

He opened up the refrigerator and pulled out a gallon of milk that _might_ have been too close to the expiration date. Had he been a few years younger and still working through college, he might have cared a little more as he poured it into a bowl full of stale cereal. Mike sat down on the couch with an added, “Hey, Jerry,” as he started shoveling spoonfuls of the stuff into his mouth.

It should be noted that “Jerry” wasn’t actually a “Jerry.” His _real_ name was Jeremy, and he exhaled deeply as he continued to watch live coverage of the aftermath of a fire at a clothing store. He pursed his lips. That’d hit them _real_ damn hard.

“Can we watch somethin’, I dunno... _better_ than this?” Mike asked after a pause.

“Define ‘better,’ Mike.”

“Like ‘infinitely more interesting and engaging’ kinda better,” he deadpanned.

“Mike, this _is_ interestin’ an’ engagin’,” Jeremy replied.

“It’s depressing as shit, dude,” Mike deadpanned. He got back up to throw the styrofoam bowl in the trash after dumping the rest of the milk in the sink. Jeremy rolled his eyes and switched the channel again, this time to SWBS (the BS stood for “bullshit,” according to Mike, of course), and was met with a rather sorry sight: there was a man doing an interview for the station, and Jeremy could see the headline “Six-year-old Girl Murdered by Ghostly Killer.”

“Damn,” Jeremy muttered as he watched the father almost break down and cry on-camera. “Happened again.”

Mike heard his comment, but only took a quick glance over his shoulder, rolled his eyes, and huffed uncaringly. “Shit happens, Jer-bear.”

Jeremy breathed in and turned the TV off. It had been at least two years they’d been living together under the same roof, and while Mike’s nicknames could get annoying, he had to give him credit for creativity. With a grunt, he pushed himself off the rather small sofa and over to the mudroom to grab his keys and a coat. “Y’all go get some better clothes on, Mike. I’m leavin’ an’ I don’t wanna be late.”

This was news to Mike, who had not been informed he was going anywhere the day before. After all, Jeremy knew he would never wake up before twelve unless something was really, _really_ wrong. “Ex...excuse me,” he chuckled, “Where the fuck’re we goin’?”

“...To my job…?” Jeremy tentatively replied. “Today’s my first day, I told y’all I was takin’ you with ‘r leavin’ ya at yer mama’s house if they wouldn’t let ya stay.” Mike kept staring at him blankly, prompting him to groan and rub his forehead. “I told ya this three days ago, Mike!”

There was a pause before Mike’s face lit up in remembrance. “Oh, _yeah…!”_ he exclaimed, “you _did_ tell me that!” He stood there for a moment and before Jeremy could make the “And…?” motion with his hands, Mike ran over and threw himself onto the couch and added flatly, “I’m stayin’ here.”

“Like hell ya are!” Jeremy said, stomping over to Mike. “Ya think I’m gonna leave ya here t’pull another stunt like ya did last time?”

“Jeremy, you act like I set something one _fire_ when that happened!” Mike cried, retracting as Jeremy came closer. He couldn’t get far enough away, however, and Jeremy pulled him up and off the couch and began forcibly escorting him back to his room.

“Put somethin’ decent on, Mike,” he stated as he opened the door.

Mike sighed in defeat. He almost closed the door before thinking of something and peeking out from behind it before it closed completely. “Jiffy-mix?”

“What?” Jeremy asked in a huff.

“Can I bring my 3DS?” Jeremy said nothing and only stared long and hard into Mike’s eyes. _~“It’ll keep me_ _quiet…”~_ he added in a sing-song voice.

“I would’a said ‘yes’ anyway,” Jeremy said. With that, Mike grinned and shut the door.

* * *

They made it out and onto the main roads in record time, although Mike didn’t know why he had bothered to go in such a hurry. Sudney was a podunk town in the middle of mid-west nowhere where nothing really happened. The most exciting thing the town had seen recently was chess tournament in Wildwood Plaza, for God’s sake. They passed a few strip malls, industrial factories that had long outlived their expiration date, the infamous Black Burroughs, so named because of the conflagration that burned the whole neighborhood to a crisp in a matter of hours, a few more office buildings.

The “Main Street” of Sudney was populated by shoddy motels, furniture stores, and restaurants, most locally-owned. It had been fifteen minutes, but Mike thought it had been fifteen hours, and he was vocal about it.

“We there yet?”

There was silence as Jeremy grumbled and tensed up. “We’ll get there when _we get there,”_ he growled. Mike had, and continued to, ask the same question over and over until Jeremy, now holding a _very_ agitated frown on his face, swerved into the turn lane and began turning left. Mike kept his face forward, which made the reveal of where Jeremy was pulling in even more gut-wrenching.

In front of them was a lot at least five-hundred square feet wide, with a two-story building in the center. And in front, looming over the front doors, was a picture of a fox, a purple rabbit, a chicken, and a bear in a top hat, waving to the world with big smiles. Under that read the title and subtitle _“Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza: Where fantasy and fun come to life!”_

“Jeremy, why the fuck we stoppin’ here?” Mike asked, trying to swallow the lump in his throat.

Jeremy didn’t react for a moment, as he was scanning for a good parking spot. He really didn’t need to, considering most of the spaces were open. But he did quirk an eyebrow and reply, “‘Cause I work here…?”

Mike’s jaw nearly dropped through the floor of the car. **“Say what?”**

He only shrugged and continued, “I jus’ said. I work here. Y’all didn’t read the ad I was fillin’ out for the security position?”

“I thought you were fucking joking!”

They pulled into a spot near the front doors and Jeremy unlocked the car and jumped out. Mike got out as well, albeit, far more apprehensively. “Jeremy, you’re _aware_ what’s in there...right?” he asked.

He shrugged. “Greasy food, arcade machines, loud kids…?” he answered nonchalantly.

“That, and don’t forget _cover-ups, corporate greed,_ and, oh yeah, _schizophrenic robots,”_ Mike added bitterly.

“Mike,” Jeremy began, “Lookit this place. It’s nowhere _near_ as bad as it used to be.” He gestured to the building, presenting it all in its glory to Mike. “It’s under sole proprietorship, the whole place’s gotten a facelift...it’s twenty-seventeen, Mike,” he explained. “Times change, y’know.”

“Maybe,” Mike retorted, “But coding doesn’t. How do you know your ‘coworkers’ up on that stage won’t start gettin’ fidgety at night?”

Jeremy didn’t reply to it. He only put his hands on his hips, and scoffed. “Mike, in all my years knowin’ ya, I ain’t never heard ya so vehemently opposed to this place before. They musta wrong ya somethin’ fierce, didn’t they?”

Mike said nothing, only crossing his arms and leaning on his right leg, complete with scowl. Jeremy sighed, but smiled all the same. “Suit yerself. Y’all can stay out here when it gets dark an’ cold.” He turned around and made for the doors, and quickly disappeared inside.

Mike remained still looking after his only true friend he had left. He stayed there, staring up at the neon picture over the entrance. Then, he inhaled sharply, as if he’d been punched in the gut, breathed out, and gave a wide smile to try and lighten his own mood.

It was obviously fake.

* * *

The place was hot and noisy. On top of the place being, well, _Freddy’s,_ Mike quickly guessed that being here was going to be a hurricane of suck.

Especially after he almost got knocked over by a small group of kids running around with no regard for the safety rules, if the place even had any. “Oh, shit!”

“Mike, langauge,” Jeremy muttered out of the corner of his mouth. “Kids here.”

“Gee, I never would’ve fuckin’ guessed.”

They’d been standing up against a wall, awkwardly, for almost five minutes after one of the resident cooks stopped by and asked them why they were there. Jeremy explained, of course, and the man flew off to find his manager. So that left them there, wading through a crowd of little kids and exasperated parents (usually the mother).

“Can I leave…?”

“No, Mike.”

“...Can I go get a drink?”

“I’unno, Mike.”

“Excuse me…?”

Over the din, they both heard her call out, and Mike and Jeremy looked over to the left. Approaching them was a woman, most likely in her late thirties, wearing glasses and a snappy blue business suit and dress. Behind her was a man in a nausea-inducing olive suit, and obviously overweight. He was balding, and he was smoking a Cuban, which taught Mike all he needed to know about how to treat the guy unless otherwise indicated. “Who the hell are you, why are you asking for me? I’m a busy man,” the overweight man interrupted.

Mike pursed his lips and nodded his head to the side acceptingly. ‘ _What goes around comes around’ it is,_ he noted to himself.

The woman looked at Jeremy, along with several sideways glances at the man, who must have been _her_ boss, and eventually, she nodded at him. Jeremy fumbled a bit and stuttered, but eventually stammered out, “I’m, ah, here t’clock in boss.”

The woman opened her mouth again, but the other man shoved past her and cut her off. “I can see that, Mister…”

There was a very long pause and Jeremy was now, Mike could see, visibly sweating. He scoffed. _Funny,_ he thought, _you didn’t bring me here to keep an eye one me, you brought me to do all the damn talking, didn’t you?_

“Fitzgerald,” Mike said, stepping in between his friend and the monster of a man in front of him. He grabbed his admittedly disgustingly sweaty hand and shook. “Jeremy Fitzgerald. He’s _thrilled_ to meet you, as you can see. I’m Mike, his B-F-F.”

The man pulled his hand back. “...Oswald,” he muttered. “Oswald Weatherby, Esquire. This...” he continued, pointing his thumb at the woman beside him, “Is my secretary, Shannon Everett.”

Mike nudged Jeremy, indicating the worst was over. He looked at him, smiled, nodded, and shook Shannon’s now outstretched hand. “Mister Fitzgerald,” she said curtly.

“Missus Everett,” he replied, looking and certainly feeling better.

“Alright, now that you’re here, punch in and get to the office,” Oswald said without skipping a beat. “And you, Mister…”

Mike raised and eyebrow and answered, “Schmidt…?” tentatively.

“Schmidt, vacate the premises,” he finished, taking a drag of his cigar.

Jeremy was about to take out his keys to the car and hand them to Mike, but then, as per usual, he had to open his mouth. _“Heh,_ yeah, I don’t think so.”

That made Jeremy freeze and he nearly choked on his own spit. “Mike what the hell’re y’all doin’?” he hissed in Mike’s ear.

Oswald froze in place, as he had been walking away. Almost as quickly as the words left Mike’s mouth, he turned around and stared Mike dead in the eyes. _“...What?”_ he asked forcefully.

“I said, I’m not goin’ nowhere if JJ doesn’t come with me. And considerin’ he’s gonna be stuck in _here_ for a damn while, I guess I’m not leavin’ either,” Mike replied with the confidence of man wearing kevlar armor.

Oswald stomped up to Mike, prompting Jeremy to take a step back. Despite being fat, Oswald was still a few inches taller than he was. “You realize I can throw you out without a second thought?”

“Didn’t know, don’t care,” Mike said with a mocking shrug. Oswald leaned in much closer to Mike’s face, and he could smell the smoke, but did his best not to cough and ruin his “tough-guy” act.

“I hope you also realize I don’t take talk like that. Not from employees, and sure as hell not from any useless _hippie_ who happens to wander in here,” he hissed. Mike only grinned

“Whatcha gonna do about it, you butter-sweatin’ bootleg Santa Claus?”

They remained like that, locked in a staring contest as the calliope music played over the speakers. At length, and lacking any interference from Shannon, who was both scared and shocked at this newcomer’s brazenness, Oswald took his cigar out of his mouth and and tapped some of the ashes out on Mike’s shirt.

The surprise didn’t last long, and Mike looked back up at Jeremy’s boss, who was now holding the cigar up by his index and middle fingers and sneering. Mike looked from him to his cigar and back before quickly reaching up and flicking the cigar so that the remaining ashes flew right into Oswald’s face.

He yelled and started blinking rapidly, along with wiping his eyes to get the ashes out. When he looked back down at Mike, there was a visible hatred the likes of which would make the Devil gasp in horror in his eyes. He wound up his free hand behind his his head, but Mike quickly threw up his hands and cried, “Wait!”

It was certainly enough to make Oswald stop. “You can hit me,” Mike continued, “but make sure you don’t have an audience first.” He pointed behind Oswald, who looked back to see at least several shocked and disappointed parents and a few more confused and worried-looking kids watching the shouting match. He quickly lowered his hand and glared back at Mike, who just shrugged innocently.

The little halo was practically visible with all the lights up in the rafters pouring down on him.

Oswald’s voice was audible, rumbling in his throat at being, for lack of a better term, played, something that he’d never had to deal with before. He quickly got ahold of himself and stomped away toward the stairway he and Shannon had come from. “You deal with them,” was his only parting comment.

Shannon watched him go before abruptly turning to Mike and Jeremy and stuttering out, “R-right this way, please.” She power-walked ahead, past the main stage of the venue, covered in spotlights and red velvet curtains. Jeremy shot a glance at Mike. It seemed to be a mix of shock, fear, and incredulousness, but Mike never got to ask him, as he walked away after Shannon almost immediately. He crossed his arms and chuckled to himself, and followed. Though, as he passed the show stage, he took a quick sideways glance at it. Tried to make sure the curtains weren’t moving “from a sudden breeze.”

He was at least thankful he couldn’t see what the hell was behind them. God forbid that shit.

* * *

As it was Jeremy’s first real day on the job, Shannon took him (and by extension, Mike) on a comprehensive tour of the new and improved _Freddy Fazbear’s._ The place was laid out more like an indoor amusement park than a restaurant attraction. Granted, there weren’t any rides or anything, but the entire place felt more like its own mini-carnival than a Chuck-E-Cheese’s knockoff, especially considering Pirate’s Cove took up the space of two medium-sized party rooms.

And apparently, circles were in the heads of the engineers and architects who remodeled the place. The ground floor was laid out so that most of the dining and party rooms were laid out in a circle around the main show stage where Freddy and the band played. There were arcade rooms as well, connected to both other adjacent rooms and the main area by hallways full of kids’ drawings.

Shannon had talked about the company for awhile. According to her, Oswald had worked with Henry Everett, her own father, for a time before moving on to a different job. After a great many years, Oswald came back to claim ownership of the company name after _Fazbear Entertainment_ went under completely, and two of Henry’s old business partners was nowhere to be found. A third one, Camilla Sutton, was contacted, but she turned down the offer.

“If you’ll beg my pardon, Mister Fitzgerald,” Shannon interjected as she walked Mike and Jeremy back to the security office, “why _do_ you insist on not leaving Mister Schmidt alone?”

Jeremy snorted. “He’s, eh…” He waved his hands around in an exaggerated fashion, prompting Shannon to fill in the blanks.

“Ah. _Problematic,”_ she said, staring over at Mike, who was obviously listening in on the conversation. “I see.”

“‘Problematic’ my left nut. Last time he left me alone, all I did was walk out to the grocery store,” Mike shot back.

“And y’all bought a two-liter of Pepsi,” Jeremy chided. “First off, y’all know I don’t like soda in my apartment, second, y’all need t’work on your impulse control.”

“I had to find _somethin’_ healthier to drink instead’a vodka,” Mike scoffed.

“Alright!” Shannon exclaimed, cutting the both of them off. She stopped at a door in between the two show areas that were connected by a plain archway. It was steel-reinforced, and Shannon took out a small remote from her pocket and opened it with a click of a button. “Here’s your office, Mister Fitzgerald.” Jeremy tipped his hat and went inside; Mike pushed his way past Shannon almost immediately after.

The security office itself was a dome-shaped room, and on the side facing the half of the show stage near the entrance were all the cameras. All of them. Jeremy couldn’t actually count them all before Shannon gave them the introduction course. “As you can see,” she began, “Mister Weatherby has spared no expense in remodeling and refurbishing _Freddy’s._ Each of these cameras looks into one room on the ground floor. Cameras for the second floor are unnecessary, as the animatronic’s programming doesn’t allow them walk up stairs.”

Jeremy’s brow furrowed, and though he couldn’t see it, Mike’s face nearly went whiter than normal. “Hol’ up, they walk around after closin’?”

Shannon adjusted her glasses and without even hesitating, stated, “The animatronics have been scrapped and rebuilt from the ground up. They will roam around at night, but they have been equipped with a specific ‘night mode’ now. The most they’ll try to do is knock on your doors and ask to come in.”

_“Almost_ struck out, there four-eyes,” Mike muttered under his breath.

She paused a moment before adding in, _“Don’t let them.”_

“...Aaand ya whiffed,” he said to himself.

“I can show you what they look like, if that makes you feel better,” Shannon said, unaware of how much shade Mike was throwing.

“Please do, ma’am.” Mike’s face curled into a nervous frown and he began making the cut gesture across his throat to stop Jeremy, but it was too late. Shannon pressed a couple buttons on the large keyboard on the desk in front of all the monitors, which cut them into static and two rebooted, sharing one video feed across all of them. There were six video feeds left in whole, two focused on the backstage of the two show stages, one one each side of the office. One was focused on a solitary animatronic in blue and red, the only humanoid animatronic out of all of them, and one was focused on Pirate’s Cove, somewhere backstage.  Shannon pressed another button on the keyboard, which lit up both stages.

On each stage stood three animatronics: a bear, a bunny, and a chicken; Freddy, Bonnie, and Chica. They looked mostly similar, but the ones in the back seemed more...done up. Made to look pretty. The ones on the stage facing front looked pretty standard.

“Ain’t never seen those before,” Jeremy said, pointing to the stage in the back of the restaurant.

“Mister Weatherby reclaimed the rights and designs for the Toy animatronics from nineteen-eighty seven several years ago,” Shannon explained. “We rebuilt them for a younger audience. I _did_ say Mister Weatherby spared no expense in revitalizing the franchise.”

“Yeah, too bad nobody’s flockin’ back to it,” Mike remarked. “I know I sure as hell wouldn’t.”

“He’s a pragmatic man, Mister Schmidt,” Shannon replied coolly, “I wouldn’t doubt his judgement.”

“Oh, don’t worry, four eyes, I can do that for ya and _then_ some.”

“That all y’all need t’tell me?” Jeremy asked before Shannon could respond to Mike.

Shannon paused a moment before saying, “...Yes, one more thing. The doors on each side can close, all you need to do is press this button…” She clicked a button on the lower-left of the panel, causing both doors to shoot downward and slam into the floor. “...On the keyboard. Any other questions…?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Then I’ll leave you to it.” Shannon readjusted her glasses and walked out of the office. “Goodnight, Mister Fitzgerald.” She paused beyond the threshold of the door. “...And Mister Schmidt,” she added grimly.

Once she was gone, Jeremy swiveled his head to look at Mike was a bit of an unamused frown. “Real charmer, y’all are.”

Mike pretended to take a long drag of a cigarette. “Don’t I know it?”

Jeremy sighed and reset the cameras and then checked his watch. “Well,” he mused, “we got some time t’kill. Want some pizza?”

“Motherfucker, I am _famished.”_ Mike followed Jeremy out of the room as he walked out, but paused and asked, “Waitamminnit, is that legal?”

“Nah, was in the contract,” Jeremy replied. “Employees get free pizza on the clock, an’ I figured since y’all’re with me…”

“Say no more,” Mike said as he marched along behind Jeremy. Soon enough, they both had a slice of pizza in their hands, right outside the main cafeteria. Mike wasn’t as adamant on digging into his, which, due to his prior statement, made Jeremy question him.

“Mike?” Mike himself looked up at Jeremy, a small string of cheese outside his mouth. “Thought y’all said ya was hungry.”

“I got nothin’ t’drink, JFK,” Mike said through a full mouth.

Jeremy rolled his eyes and leaned through the kitchen bay window. “Hey!” he called in. “Uh...Tanner! That your name, right? Y’all got anything to drink back there?”

There was a pause before the cook in the kitchen yelled “Catch!” and Jeremy grabbed a can of soda as it flew through the air. He handed it out to Mike…

“Holy shit, my prayers have been answered!” Mike said, snatching the can out of Jeremy’s grip. “They carry Pepsi now!” He popped the lid open and raised it to toast and said, “You know, maybe this won’t suck,” and slugged a quarter of it down in one go.

Which hit Jeremy as odd, especially after Mike took the can off his lips with only a pained smile on his face. Normally, he knew, Mike would chug half a can of pop in one go. “...Uh...Mike?” he asked tentatively.

Without hesitation, Mike reached over the bay window and poured the remaining liquid into the sink before tossing it in a nearby trash can.

_“It’s fucking lukewarm."_

* * *

Hiding anywhere in the Prize Corner of the restaurant would be a fairly easy thing. There were cabinets about waist-high that could conceal anyone if they crouched low enough. The counter at the back where said prizes were redeemed was also a valid place. Yet, out of all these places, there was one that was made the most of by something no one who entered the room would ever expect. In the far right corner was a display. On it sat several giant stuffed Freddy, Foxy, Bonnie, and Chica plushies on top of multicolored present boxes. One of them was made with a purple finish and blue strings.

None of the presents were actually wrapped (it _was_ for display, after all). And little by little, a spindly, black hand with three fingers poked open the lid. In the darkness under it, only white dots could be seen, glowing faintly, flitting about. After a moment, it spoke in a raspy whisper, seemingly to nothing.

_“Hmm...I can feel...guests...in our home.”_ It paused, considering this new development. _“Perhaps this time...perhaps…”_

Without another sound, it lowered the lid to the box again, content to wait in silence. As had been its way for so long already.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 11/18/17: Welcome to the new-and-improved, Five Months at Freddy's! I knew the story was good before (or at least, it got attention), but honestly...it was disorganized. I thought I could've wrote it better. So I did.
> 
> Enjoy!


	3. Fresh Hell

A long time ago, all the kids had left, along with their parents. Well, technically, it had only been several hours, but it sure felt like a long time ago. Mike was busy playing his 3DS and chewing on gum he’d grabbed from a vending machine while Jeremy diligently worked through the cameras one at a time.

“Holdin’ up, Mike?”

He sighed and allowed the bubble he was blowing to pop. “I _guess.”_

Jeremy muttered an affirmate “Hmm,” before going back to looking through the cameras. The system was actually quite impressive, for a business that didn’t have that much money to spare, or so he’d been told. He figured it wasn’t his place to ask anyway. The silence remained for awhile until, sensing something was wrong, Jeremy turned his head around. “Mike?”

“What?” he replied.

Jeremy paused, considering his words, and the silence made Mike cast a look his way. It was _that_ kind of look, too. “Y’all _really_ don’t wanna be here, do ya?”

Mike scoffed and went back to playing his game. “Hell-fucking-no.”

“Y’all don’t wanna be here, but don’t wanna go t’see yer mother...Why’s that?” Jeremy pried.

Mike stopped his game abruptly and looked up. He honestly hadn’t thought about that question deep before...or more accurately, how to answer it. “Mom’s at the age where she’ll talk my damn ears off. And this place…” he trailed off, “...always left a bad taste in my mouth. I’d rather be bored here than bored to death listening to my mother ramble on.”

“What kinda bad taste?” Jeremy continued.

Mike paused...then slowly looked up with a face contorted in confusion. “The hell you wanna know?” he asked, swiveling his chair around to face Jeremy, who put his arms up and turned back to face the monitors.

“Just askin’, Mike, Jesus,” he conceded.

“Yeah, ‘Jesus’ is right.” Mike went back to playing games for all of three minutes before abruptly and loudly asking to no one in particular, “How goddamn long do we have’ta stay here!?”

Jeremy, after he took his hands off his ears, looked down at his watch. “It’s...eight-thirty right now, Mike,” he said. “We got about...nine an’ a half hours t’go.”

“Fuck my ass!” Mike cried as he stomped the floor.

Jeremy couldn’t help but chuckle, mostly out of pity, as he continued his job. Mike could act like a real petulant child sometimes. He mostly elected to leave him to his games as he switched through the cameras. He thought it funny: when he showed up for his interview, he was almost immediately hired aboard. Shannon said their last guard had stayed for one night and immediately quit the following morning. He initially thought it odd, but he got a look at the kid’s picture and immediately placed his type: high-strung, anxious, probably didn’t work well under pressure. What kind of pressure could be applied here, he had no idea.

He was brought out of his musing and flow by a sudden, and very loud, banging from somewhere in the kitchen. It made him jump, and it nearly made Mike fall out of his chair and onto his ass. _“...Fuck was that?”_ he hissed as his nails dug into the armrests.

Jeremy glanced out the right door, in the general direction of the kitchen. “Prob’ly nothin’,” he said, grabbing a torch and standing up. “Want me t’check it out, ya big baby?”

Mike glared up at Jeremy, but wiped the angry expression off his face. “While you’re there, get me a cold Pepsi, huh?” he asked.

Jeremy scoffed as he left the office. “Why do y’all think ya need one?”

Mike glanced up from behind his 3DS with a wry smile and said, “It’s your apology for calling me a baby. Besides, we know that out of the both of us, _I’m_ the one who has to talk to people who are bigger and scarier for you, which automatically gives me the bigger pair of balls.” Jeremy scoffed and left the office without another word.

It was funny, though, just what a few hours of daylight could make here. With only half the lights on, every corner and wall was coated in shadow, giving off the illusion that, perhaps, the walls weren’t real. It was like walking through The Twilight Zone. Jeremy got to the kitchen quickly and easily enough, and he threw the door open and shined his flashlight in. The room itself was laid out as one would expect: there was a freezer in the back, along with two stainless steel tables laid out horizontally from the door Jeremy entered from.

Against the walls hung pots and pans, spoons and other utensils, and in the cabinets, Jeremy found all the silverware arranged neatly. “Huh,” he huffed to himself. “Ain’t that the damndest thing.” He closed the cupboard he’d been inspecting and walked back out into the hallway.

And by the time he noticed the tall, broad figure hiding behind the corner to his far left, it was gone.

Jeremy considered himself a rational man, but he was pretty damn sure he saw something, and that what he saw was in no way natural, so he booked it back to the security office as fast as he could. Mike saw him duck into the room and immediately set about checking the cameras, which elected a confused stare at first, and then a piercing cackle. “What’s got ya runnin’ scared, ya big baby?”

“Mike, this ain’t to time t’joke!” Jeremy stammered as he checked and rechecked each monitor. “I swear I saw somethin’ hiding out ‘round a corner and I think someone just broke in!”

“Please,” Mike chuckled as he got up off his chair, “who in their right goddamn mind would rob _this_ place? There’s nothing to steal except greasy leftovers and dime-a-dozen prizes.”

“Look man, all I know is that _I_ saw somethin’ and I’m gonna get t’the bottom of it in a damn hurry before-” Jeremy froze mid-sentence as he looked over the cameras. Mike stared at him, waiting for Jeremy to finish his thought before he decided to check on what had actually garnered his attention. It only took him a minute of studying the monitors before he noticed, in the middle-right of the multitude of screens, something was moving. When he focused on it, he felt his heart stop for a solid second: Bonnie and Chica were hopping off the stage, completely of their own accord, the curtains already wide open.

And Freddy himself was nowhere to be found.

“Oh, my God,” Mike whispered.

It was then Mike noticed something else, and it only took a couple seconds for Jeremy to catch on as well: on the monitor immediately to the left, on the opposite show stage where the Toy animatronics were. They were all filing off the stage, too. It took them a couple minutes to take it all in before Jeremy breathed out and sat back into his chair, though he was massaging his forehead to try and keep the stress down. “Jell-o, the hell’re you doin’? The animatronics‘re-”

“Roaming around in night mode, I bet,” Jeremy commented. Mike’s jaw hung open for a minute and then shut and he grinded his teeth. “Or did y’all forget that already, since ya were bein’ so scared?”

There was a pause as Mike sat back down in his chair and sighed. Jeremy chuckled and went back to watching the monitors. Mike watched them too, if not for the fact he didn’t want to die of fright when one of them wandered by the office and he didn’t know about it. He looked to his left. His eyes went as wide as plates.

Jeremy was about to switch the video feed to night vision mode before Mike tapped him on the shoulder and gestured behind him. “Alright, Mike now what’s-”

He stopped short to see two figures leaning around the walls and staring directly into the security office. The shadows concealed most detail, but the ears and pink eyes on one and the peppy hairstyle on the other indicated it was Bonnie _and_ Toy Chica. Jeremy spluttered and slammed the “Close Door” button on the keyboard.

Both steel doors slammed into the ground and Jeremy moaned and sunk his head into his hands.

“Did’ja remember we ain’t supposed to let those walkin’ scrap heaps into this room?”

“Shut the hell up, Mike.”

With nothing else to do, they remained sitting in front of the monitors, scanning each and every one carefully. And they bore witness to why Jeremy had been hired so fast and why Mike hated the place with every fiber of his being, lacking another reason. One one screen, Pirate’s Cove suddenly came to life; the entire attraction lifted the curtains off of the props and flung them away from the archways between sets. There was no one visible...for a moment. Out of the shadows of one of the massive shipwreck props slunk Foxy himself, followed closely by his Toy counterpart. They could hear the music filtering in from behind the steel doors.

On another screen, they saw the humanoid animatronic, Balloon Boy, slowly look up and into the camera and laugh. In no time, the monitors were filled with activity, but whatever happened there paled in comparison to what came knocking on the steel doors.

_“Ahoy, mateys! Anyone in there…?”_

Jeremy and Mike shared pleading glances, to which Mike only shook his head solemnly, never blinking or taking his eyes off Jeremy. They waited a minute and heard footsteps on the left leave, muttering something in a presumably disappointed manner. _“Now, don’t you be scared none,”_ came a deeper voice on the right. It could only be from Freddy. _“We wanna talk with you fellas.”_

_“Yeah, come on out! It’s time to play!”_ called Toy Chica.

Mike leaned in and whispered, “Ignore’em, dude.”

“Mike, God save my soul, I’m tryin’,” Jeremy whispered back.

_“Hey! Hey! Hey, open up!”_ said a more high-pitched voice on the left again. _“Hey, d’you like balloons? I’ve got some! Actually, I got plenty! You mind if-”_

“I think we’re gonna die.”

“Christ, I hope so,” Mike deadpanned, hiding as much of his fear as he could.

* * *

The basement of Freddy’s was in a constant state of entropy that never seemed to complete itself. It was dark, moldy, and for some reason, there was almost a constant kind of mist concealing everything. It could have been from the uneven mix of cold-to-hot air filtering in from above and below ground, but considering the pizzeria’s history, it was more than likely borne of something more...supernatural.

The area itself was almost as big as the ground floor, though a lot less spacious; instead, it was almost entirely comprised of narrow corridors. In one of the few rooms larger than a low-end apartment bedroom, however, were several dozen circuit breakers, hooked up to almost every part of the pizzeria’s electrical system. It was a place that, after two hours of unsuccessfully trying to lure the two new security guards out (which, in all honesty, wasn’t surprising), the Puppet who lived in the present box had taken a very adamant interest in.

It didn’t need to worry much about physical constraints; his link to the other side ensured he could do things the others couldn’t. Namely go through walls, create illusions of itself to talk on its behalf, and listen to everything that happened in the restaurant. Of course, that was only the tip of the iceberg. The only true limit was its partner’s imagination. As its form coalesced once more in that basement forgotten by time, it floated toward the circuit breakers...and found something waiting.

Looking over each and every one of the electrical boxes was a wispy black figure, in the shape of a giant animatronic bear wearing a yellow hat and bowtie. It bore a striking resemblance to the long forgotten mascot of the predecessor business, _Fredbear’s Family Diner._

_“Ah...Malcolm…”_ The living shadow abruptly turned around to look at the Puppet. _“You are...keeping yourself busy, I see…?”_

“You know I try,” Malcolm drawled in a light Dixie accent. He quickly looked away, simply content to study the boxes.

_“You felt them, too...I take it…?”_ it asked, floating closer.

“In a way,” Malcolm replied. “The kid woke me up. Said he felt somethin’ familiar upstairs. Couldn’t leave‘im guessin’.”

The Puppet nodded thoughtfully. “ _Truly...not a more noble creature...to be found,”_ it mused. _“My own scion...felt something as well...A burning fire...of willpower...in the chest. They...may yet...prove useful.”_ Malcolm nodded respectfully and searched through the circuit boxes until he stopped and point at the one on the far left. The Puppet raised its hand, shooting a string of white ectoplasm out of its palm and grabbing the lid before yanking it off, all while remaining eerily stiff, as if its movements were being guided. _“Might I ask...which one...intrigued the youngling?”_

“The tall one. Figger I oughta call’im ‘hippie’ ‘til the kid gives me a name,” Malcolm said. “Kinda weird, though. If I didn’ know no better, I’d say the kid knew’im from before…”

The Puppet seemed to hum in agreement. _“That is...Michael, I believe. You present...an interesting...angle...on such a development. As such...I shall see if I may...yet convert...Mister Jeremy.”_

It launched another string of white in the box, catching every last wire, and remained electrocuted due to simple circumstance of being half-incorporeal. And with but a thought, it brought about the next step.

* * *

Mike and Jeremy had been watching the monitors for what felt like years, and had been listening to things knocking on their doors for what felt like far longer. They had almost grown used to it.

The electricity suddenly shutting off building-wide certainly helped keep them alert.

The both of them immediately shot up out of their chairs and stood frozen in place. There were no windows this far back into the restaurant.

It was pitch-black.

“...Jeremy…?”

“...Mike…?”

“Where are you…?”

“Right here.”

Mike started to inch over to his left, grasping desperately through at the darkness. “Stay still...please.”

“I get’chu, I get’chu,” Jeremy replied. “Just follow the soothing sound of my voice.”

Mike stifled a chuckle; at this point, he was laughing on reflex to not make himself panic, but he managed to grab Jeremy’s shoulder in no time. “There you are. I think. Izzat really you?”

“Think that’s yer hand on my shoulder,” he consoled.

“Cool,” Mike said. “...Now what?”

Jeremy sighed. “Now? Now we gotta get outta here an’ turn the power back on.”

Mike paused and was thankful Jeremy couldn’t see him as he quickly wiped his forehead, neck, and his armpits. “...Where the power at, tho?”

“Sheit, if I had t’guess,” Jeremy muttered, “It’d either be upstairs or in the basement.”

“...Can we check upstairs first…?” Mike whined.

“My thoughts exactly.” He would’ve called Mike a big baby again, but at this point, he wasn’t sure if he could go on for much longer without shitting _himself_ , either. And so, inch by laborious inch, they crept their way out of the security office and around the back of the restaurant. It must have taken them several hours...or ten minutes. The power was off and there were no windows in the back, so they couldn’t tell. As they snuck around, Mike picked up on something, and whispered, “‘S quiet,” to Jeremy.

“Yeah, I noticed.” Jeremy groped around in front of him and led Mike around a wall blocking them. “...Think that means they’re...gone…?”

“Nah, man, we’re gonna die.”

“C’mon, Mike, think positive for once!” Jeremy whispered back.

“...Maybe we’ll die _quickly.”_

“God- **dammit,** Mike.”

Eventually, Jeremy and Mike worked themselves around to the back of the pizzeria, and the closest set of stairs to the upper floor. Jeremy managed to find it back kicking it with his foot, but only after he didn’t feel any solid wall up ahead. A test, if you will. “Here she is,” he muttered. “Follow me, Mike.”

“You got it, Mr. J.”

Jeremy felt around on his shoulder and grabbed Mike’s resting hand. It made him pause. Something felt wrong. “Hey, Mike?”

“Yeah?”

“What kinda lotion y’all use on ya skin?”

Mike scrunched his face up. “...I don’t _use_ lotion, Jeremy.”

“Well, your hand feels real smooth. Like, too smooth,” Jeremy ruminated. “...Feels like smooth-ass metal.”

Once those words left his mouth, Jeremy’s stomach sunk, and and turned around to look into the darkness behind him.

And a second later, two baby-blue eyes lit up a solid foot over his head.

Mike saw it too, and instinctively screamed “Holy **shit...!”** a split second before who they both assumed as Freddy pivoted and grabbed them both by their collars, one in each hand, and threw them backwards into the darkness, screaming the whole way. Mike landed with a dull thud on the floor, but heard a lot of crashing and yelling from Jeremy; he must have landed on a table.

_“Jeremy…!_ ”

Through pained cries, he heard him yell, _“Mike…!”_

“Hang on, motherfucker, I’m comin’ for ya- _uurk!”_ Mike’s declaration was stopped as something hooked its arms around his stomach and pulled, forcing the wind out of him, and before he could turn his upper body and punch what had him, his legs were pinned together and he saw, for a split second, the same pair of blue eyes glowing in the darkness in front of him before he felt something punch him right in the jaw.

His head spun for a few seconds, and when he could see straight again, he noticed he was being carried around by not one, not two, but _three_ animatronics. He could tell because their eyes were all glowing in the dark. Pink, blue, and lavender; Bonnie, Freddy, and Chica. Where Foxy was was beyond him.

And worse yet, Jeremy’s yelling had faded, after hearing more sounds of a scuffle and some nasty left hooks.

It didn’t take him long to start calling down the verbal airstrike. “Fuck _you…!”_ He continued to struggle, but something had his legs bound. “I...I know what you’re doing!” Nothing in their eyes indicated they cared. “I kn-know it all! The-the rumors, the dis-disappearances…” He started cackling as he continued, “It’s all because of you, ain’t it!? Y-you...you take’em to the back and throw-’em into the costumes, right? Right…!? _Bah-ha-ha!_ Of course I’m right! I know everything about this place, and by God, I can die, oooh, but I ain’t gonna die without a fight!”

He tried kicking his legs out to the side, which definitely caught _one_ of them. He felt something block his way, heard the stumble...as well as the _“Ow, shit! Stop makin’ dis so friggin’ difficult...cunt!”_

Mike froze. He had never, once in his life, heard any of the animatronics _react_ naturally. That meant that, just maybe, what they were saying... _wasn’t pre recorded._

He didn’t get to take much of it in, though, as before he knew what was happening, he heard a door open and was tossed through it as unceremoniously as someone throwing out the garbage. He yelled a couple more curses and propped himself up on his arm. The last thing he saw of the outside were the three pairs of eyes before he heard the door slam, and they disappeared.

Meanwhile, Jeremy had suffered a similar fate. Except, while he was certainly subdued and his legs tied up, he was carted off in a totally different direction. He was also a _lot_ less vocal about his fate. He figured talking wouldn’t do much anyway. And he was also scared stiff. After a couple minutes of walking, he felt himself tossed out and he landed on the floor with a loud thud.

He grunted and looked back at where he thought his captors stood. He saw their piercing eyes, blue, blue, and green. Toy Freddy, Balloon Boy, and Toy Bonnie. Oddly enough, they only seemed to be standing there, completely still in an archway. He guessed they were trying to block him, and so he checked his legs and was surprised to see that there was some sort of cord keeping them bound. The knot they’d made wasn’t even that hard to undo. Jeremy reached for it and looked back up at the animatronics, tensing up with each minute movement he made, as if they’d suddenly go off on him for trying to escape. Oddly enough, they never did, and he got the cord off and slowly, painfully slowly, stood back up.

And they remained in the same placed. Staring at him, rarely blinking. He found himself stuck between two glass display cases for prizes, and considering everything was still deathly dark, he didn’t dare try and run. Or take his eyes off them.

“What…” He breathed heavily, trying to steady his voice and his thoughts. “What do y’all...what d’y’all _want_ from me…?”

There was nothing but silence. It was so quiet, Jeremy feared even his own breathing was too loud. _“We want...nothing...”_

Jeremy whipped around and stared, horrified, to his left, into what he guessed was the back of Prize Corner. From the inky blackness, he saw two white dots slowly flicker to life...and float steadily towards him. At length, he saw it: a marionette, wearing a white porcelain mask, and shaped like a near-elicited human, and about as tall as one. _“But I...want revenge…”_

“R-re-revenge…?” Jeremy stammered. “Look, man, I n-never did nothin’ to nobody in here, ya g-gotta believe me.” By now, his dark skin had lost a _lot_ of color.

_“Not...on you…”_ it clarified. _“I have...felt it...in the tides of...the veil. A great tragedy...is brewing...There is…”_ It seemed to lift its chest, as if inhaling steadily. _“Only one way...to stop it…”_

Jeremy was still too scared out of his mind to talk, but the Puppet didn’t need to talk to him. In an instant, strands of ectoplasmic string shot out of its hands, flying and wrapping themselves around Jeremy’s wrists before he could so much as blink. He looked left and right frantically; he would have tried to escape had he not been paralyzed. Jeremy looked up, his eyes twitching, his muscles frozen with fear, back into the unearthly eyes of the Puppet.

_“Your soul must become like ours. Laid bare, and reborn.”_

All Jeremy felt was pain shooting through each and every one of his muscles, bones, and through every cell of his brain. This pain felt like swords piercing his chest. He felt something deep inside him burning. He screamed; no screams for release, or mercy. Just a terrified shriek that threatened to break his larynx. Jeremy didn’t know how to equate it to anything he’d felt before; maybe that was why it hurt so much.

The only thing he saw before he finally passed out were those white, pinprick-sized eyes glaring down at him before they faded away into the blackness.

* * *

Mike shivered and rubbed his arms. He’d gotten out of his binds quickly enough; the cord was surprisingly flimsy after stretching it taut enough times. The basement was cold though, probably ten degrees colder than upstairs, and Mike only had a short-sleeve shirt on. He’d wandered through the mist covering the basement for what felt like hours, but must have been at least fifteen minutes, realistically speaking.

Peering around another corner, he saw nothing but dim blue light coming from the dying lights on the ceiling, more fog, and several crates stacked together, making walking through the hall more constricted. He sighed and nervously crept around the corner and onward. Each cautious, tentative step made the tile below him groan and creak, making it obvious the basement was the lowest priority on the company’s list of upkeep.

There was a cough.

Mike spun around so fast, he almost slipped and fell, and boy, would _that_ have been an embarrassing way to die, he thought as he steadied himself. As he stared behind, from the way he came, he saw nothing down the other end of the hall, save for more mist obscuring his vision. He slowly, ever so slowly, turned his head back around. There was nothing in front of him, either. Mike swallowed hard and continued on.

The longer he stayed down there, the more he noticed his breath coming out like steam in front of him. “God... **dammit,”** he hissed. “Goddammit, it’s cold.”

He turned another corner, getting more and more lost the longer he roamed around. This hallway was cluttered, too. And for some reason, it looked darker near the end. Mike wasn’t good at physics, but even _he_ knew light didn’t work like that. Mike didn’t have anything on him he could use as a blunt weapon beside his fists, so he put them up like a boxer and stepped forward. The further he went, the faster he saw the light around him fading, as if there was some invisible filter stopping it from getting very far.

_“He likes it dark.”_

Mike’s breathing hitched and he snapped around, fists up and ready.

Nothing.

After sensing nothing else was going to happen, Mike made an about-face and kept sneaking forward, one foot in front of the other. After a few more steps, it had become exponentially harder to see, but it certainly wasn’t as pitch-black as the restaurant had been. In fact, he could quite easily see his immediate surroundings: there were a couple crates, some very old posters from what Mike assumed was the predecessor location, child’s drawings that even _looked_ older than dirt, and, as he looked down immediately in front of him, he saw a robotic leg, sticking out across the floor. He froze, and traced it back to the animatronic body it owned.

It was a yellow bear, slumped against the wall.

The air around him went even colder than before, and Mike felt all his hair standing on end. He wouldn’t have been surprised if he looked like some sort of younger, more punk-rock Albert Einstein. The bulky body, the ridiculously big jaws...the tacky purple top hat and bow tie. Mike remembered good ol’ _Fredbear_ , all right. “...Not you again…” Mike muttered. He paused, letting the cold wash over him. “...Y’know what?” he said, “I’m _glad_ you’re down here. You can rot in a shallow grave, you piss-colored circus reject. I swear to God, once I get out, if I see your fat face again before I die, it’ll be too fuckin’ soon.”

Two golden dots flared to life in the robot’s skull.

And Mike screamed. He barely even moved anywhere as the flashbacks hit him, one after another, with faster rapid-fire than a tommy gun. It was more than enough time for the lumbering suit to push himself up off the ground. When Mike was able to refocus, he instinctively ducked down when he saw Fredbear’s right hand coming up.

He had expected a punch with the force of a lead cannonball behind it; what he got caught him off-guard. Instead of getting a dozen new offerings for the tooth fairy, Fredbear lunged forward, bringing his hand forward and grabbing Mike by the neck, pinning him to the wall. He could feel several of his vertebrae snap back into their designated places, and if it weren’t for the fact he felt some of the broken plaster poking him, he would’ve said “thank you.”

Still, Mike was scared out of his mind. A giant death machine shaped like a kid-friendly bear was glaring down at him with black sclera and yellow pupils; he was partially thankful his body was numb with fear, if it only meant he couldn’t feel if he’d shit himself. The worst part was that the robot had remained completely silent the whole time. No speech...not even the sound of whirring gyros and joints.

“F...fucker…” Mike choked. “Shoulda known...there was some shit...wrong with you…”

He didn’t snap Mike’s neck...at least not yet. Instead, Fredbear actually took a step closer while Holding Mike in place. He was close enough for Mike to feel his breath. Mike’s face shifted to confusion for a brief moment. He was breathing. Somehow.

“What…”

Then he looked into his eyes once more. There was an ghostly shine to them...at this point, it wasn’t surprising...but Mike could feel something in them. It was a gut feeling, but he felt pain, confusion, sadness…

And then everything clicked.

“Oh, my God...Oh, my God, there’s _no_ way,” he spat. He paused for a moment, but then a bitter smile curled his lips. And he laughed. _“Hah...ah-ha-hahaha…!_ I should’ve fucking known it!” he howled. “Do it, then...! Do it! Snap my fucking neck, tear my goddamn heart out! I bet it’ll look funny. I bet you’ll **laugh.** I bet you’ll be _happy_ I’ll be dead!”

Mike clammed up after that, and resigned himself to looking death in the eyes as he went down. Fredbear didn’t move, and made no indication to do it either, which made Mike relax, if only slightly, and unclench his teeth. Then, in a heartbeat, Fredbear reached up with his other hand and placed it over Mike’s face. He was certain he’d get his face torn off slasher-film style until he felt something strange. It felt like it was coming from his gut, welling up into his throat. There was pressure, as if he’d been delivered numbing medication for getting a tooth pulled out.

And then it all came out, a golden light that shot from his eyes and mouth as he yelled. It remained muffled by Fredbear’s hand, but in the end the sensory overload proved too much, and his arms and head went limp.

Fredbear stood back up, now holding Mike by the collar, staring down at his unconscious face. His face couldn’t form expressions, but his eyes radiated concern. He remained like that, trying to read Mike’s face, hoping beyond hope that maybe…

A black, wispy mist came rolling in from the side, and when Fredbear saw it, he immediately set Mike down gently on the floor and took a few steps back. After taking a moment to coagulate, the shadow transformed into the mysterious black bear, who stood over Mike. He bent down, holding his bulky hand a few inches over Mike’s face and slowly moved it down, in an almost robotic fashion. After a second, he nodded and looked back up at Fredbear. “He’s alive, son.”

Fredbear seemed to lower his shoulders as if breathing a sigh of relief. “Go back ta sleep, if ya feel it. I’ll take care’a yer friend.”

In time, the lights miraculously worked again, but everything was still. The only signs of movement come from behind drawn curtains. They were busy working. Working as they had been instructed, because this…this was unfamiliar territory.

_This_ was a first.


	4. Secrets Don't Keep

Secrets Don’t Keep

Despite going through a calm and dreamless sleep, Mike never did handle waking up well, and nearly dying made him shoot straight up as soon as his eyes opened and he yelled, with perfect clarity, _“Eat shit, Bob Ross…!”_ as he swung his fist out to punch whatever was in front of him. Said fist hit a giant wooden pole. The pain was number than normal, at first, but as his mind refocused, it began to sting. Mike grunted and rubbed his knuckles. He noticed he’d even splintered some of the plaster-shaped wood from the force of impact.

“Waitaminnit…”

And then he noticed just where he’d woken up.

He’d been lying on a mock-wooden bed, placed somewhere behind a set piece of a pirate ship. This back room had scarce decorations, if such things could even be _called_ “decorations,” mainly consisting of kid’s drawings and old, obviously decommissioned props. Mike forced himself up and off the bed, and after a moment, pulled out his phone. He was nowhere near being able to afford a quarter of the price of a smartphone, having to settle with a machine that could only be used to call, text, and check the time. Which was one a.m., coincidentally.

“I was only out for...about four hours,” he muttered. “I thought I was dead. Shit.” Mike took a quick look around and walked over to a ladder that led him down and out of the small room. He couldn’t see the finer details, but as he looked around on his way down, he saw the props arrayed in the dim light, the plastic ships, the fake landscapes, and the mock-Caribbean buildings of Tortuga. “...Pirate’s Cove…” he whispered as he stepped off the ladder. “But if I was out cold in the basement...how’d I get here…?”

The only feasible solution he could think of was that he was dead, and this was his mind trying to comprehend his last few living seconds. Out of curiosity, Mike started patting himself down. First the head, then chest, arms, finally the legs. He paused and pursed his lips for a moment...then clutched his crotch for a second. “...Feels okay to me,” he muttered. He glanced around and sauntered, somewhat hesitantly, toward where he thought the main entertainment area was, and in time, found the curtain, as he predicted.

Mike grabbed them and parted them slightly, quiet as a mouse, and stuck his face into the hole. He could see straight down the wide hallway that led to the left side of the main show area. And yet, it made his hair stand on end, simply for one simple fact…

“The lights are all on…” he said to himself.

And it was true. Granted, not _every_ light in the restaurant was on, but it looked like it had been before the power got cut. A little unnerving, but when faced with what he went through, it looked like Cupcake Island, Land of Unicorns and Rainbows. Mike rubbed his forehead and said to himself, “Jesus Christ...I always knew the pizza here was low-brow, but I never thought they’d resort to stuffing LSD in that shit.” He sighed and straightened himself back up, his face disappearing as he took a step back from the curtains. “Shit, if I’m okay, that must mean Jeremy’s back in the office by now. Probably sippin’ on a fuckin’ iced mocha, or whatever his ass prefers drinkin’.”

He laughed to himself. Although, he had to cut it off when he felt something. A slight pressure and weight. It felt like...a hand on his shoulder.

Mike didn’t need to turn around to get any more mood whiplash and hastily cried out, **“Holy fuck…!”** as he spun to his right and, acting on reflex, delivered a devastating jab with his left fist. It connected, sending who had clasped his shoulder reeling. When Mike registered who it was, he froze, his mind struggling to comprehend what he was seeing.

In front of him was Foxy, who staggered backward and yelped, clutching his muzzle. But he looked different; Mike didn’t see any signs of metal plates forming his costume over an endoskeleton. He didn’t see his eyes reflecting light the same way plastic did. He heard his fist make contact, and instead of a loud _*clang!*_ there was instead, a _*crack!*_ of bone hitting bone, and above all, he noticed Foxy no longer had a hook for a right hand. And then Foxy stared up at him. Mike could see it now, that the former animatronic now looked like he was made of full flesh and blood.

When the reality struck, Mike’s blood pressure went as high as it’s ever been, and his face went significantly whiter.

In a flash, Mike had broken out of the curtains of Pirate’s Cove and was barreling down the hallway that went back to the show stage area. Above it all, a continuous cry of “Ohshit, ohshit, ohshit…!” echoed off the walls. Mike dashed into the main area, but unfortunately, he didn’t notice someone else charging at him until they’d crashed into him and both fell to the ground. Mike and his assailant rolled over each other a couple times in a vicious struggle, but ultimately, he was pinned to the floor, and as he looked around with his head free, he could see that Bonnie was holding him down, and using his full weight to keep him from moving. More disturbingly, his purple fur and pink eyes looked almost as natural as Foxy.

“‘Ey, stop freakin’ squirmin’!” he barked in an almost hilariously stereotypical Boston accent, “We need’a talk wit’cha.”

“F-fu-fuck o-off…!” Mike hollered. “‘Talk’ nothin’! I-I-I’m gettin’ the f-fuck ou-outta here an-nd never lookin’ b-back!”

He kept wriggling, trying his hardest to at least free one arm, until he heard footsteps. They were coming closer.

Mike heard them stop, and he slowly looked up to see Freddy Fazbear himself towering over him. He held a neutral stare on his face, and his hands were behind his back, all of it accented by an admittedly snappy dark blue vest and tan slacks. A couple steps behind him was Chica, covered in a lime-green dress, staring down at him with…

Mike squinted. Her eyes were darting between him, Bonnie, and Freddy. Her brows were furrowed. She almost looked...worried. The whole macabre absurdity of this situation stunned Mike into silence, his defiant shouts gurgling and dying in his throat.

“Blimey!” came Foxy’s gruff, accent-heavy voice. He ran up to the gathered group, to Freddy’s right, leaving three out of the four strangely-not-animatronics staring down at Mike. “Ye try te be hospitable an’ all ye be rewarded wi’ be a fist in yer face.” He rubbed his upper lip, which was, by now, stained with dry blood. “Th’ li’l scalawag got a _damn_ good arm, though, I give’im that.”

This, however, only made Mike start to struggle again, and did so even harder to get out of Bonnie’s steel grip. He jostled around as much as he could, prompting Bonnie to yell and quickly catch his balance. He retaliated by using one arm to pin Mike’s arms behind him and using his free hand to pin his head to the ground. “Knock dat shit off already, ya clown! Ain’t makin’ my job any easiah!”

“Bonnie, I told ya a hundred times, no swearin’!” Freddy bellowed.

Chica took a couple steps forward and exclaimed, “Bonnie, stop! You’re only scaring him even more! Let him go!” Her voice was laced with what Mike equated to “a mother’s worry,” which he found even stranger...but somehow, made him calm down slightly.

Bonnie looked straight back up at her. “Okay, _mom,_ an’ how do I know he ain’t gonna bolt again soon as I let’im go…?” he shot back

Chica gestured down at Mike and said, “Bonnie, look at him, he’s practically having a heart attack already!”

“Okay, sure, but what if-”

“Jus’ let’im go already, Bonnie.”

Bonnie stared up at Freddy, not so much in shock as it was a questioning incredulousness, but after a moment, he huffed and muttered, “Fine, suit yaself, I ain’t runnin’ after his ass if he bolts, dat’s on you…” Mike felt all the weight lift off his back and neck, and in a split-second, he’d jumped up and jumped backward. He took several steps, as if he was jogging, while still looking back. He could see that Bonnie was dressed in an orange vest, and Foxy had a red trenchcoat on. The old mascots, they were...all dressed. Their thought processes were, by now, obviously functioning at higher levels than anything a human could program. He stopped a few feet away. Bonnie looked like he was about to chase him, but quickly rethought it, and instead crossed his arms. They were all staring at him. With those big, eerily real eyes. He looked left, then right, then back, and then spoke.

“Jesus H-tapdancing-Christ, what the fuck is happening…!?”

* * *

His breath, steady, his mind, somewhat clouded. Jeremy felt like he hadn’t previously existed before waking up. It was that groggy feeling, that feeling where you have wholly invested yourself into the notion that your dream was, for all intents and purposes, your real life, and waking up was like coming out of The Matrix. All the same, Jeremy groaned and opened his eyes.

Directly in front of his face was Toy Foxy, staring dead into his eyes.

_“Oh, my God!”_

Jeremy yelled and pushed himself backward. It caused him to fall out of the booth he’d been lying in. He might’ve almost broken his neck if he hit it at a steeper angle. Toy Foxy didn’t see it happen; her pupils shrank as soon as Jeremy’s mouth opened, and she turned on her heel and bolted across the room like lightning and disappeared around the corner of an archway.

Jeremy, on the other hand, remained on his back, his legs hanging over the seat of the booth. He opened one eye, grunted, and slid the rest of his lower body off the cushion. Eventually, he stood back up, and dusted himself off, looking back towards the arch Toy Foxy had so quickly left through. He stayed there, near frozen, breathing heavily, and whispered, “What in the name of…?” He kept staring at the exit, blinked a few times, then shook his head. “...Must’ve hit my head too hard.”

“I should hope not, my friend.”

Jeremy spun around. Looking behind him, he could now see he was in a room with a deluxe sized ballpit in the far left corner. To the right, however, he could see something standing around, partially concealed in shadow. That something slowly strode out of the corner and toward him, and Jeremy froze up again upon seeing Toy Freddy coming toward him, dressed up in a stovepipe hat, blue trousers, and a white shirt with a vest over it, and lacking any outward signs of metal plating and circuitry. He even had a monocle on, though whether it was for show or not was unknown to Jeremy.

Freddy gripped the edges of his vest and straightened them out, and Jeremy could only stay in place. He didn’t feel threatened _per se_ , but he _was_ ready to run at any sign of danger. “We _are_ in desperate need of your assistance, after all,” he articulated as he walked up to Jeremy.

There was only silence. Jeremy looked Toy Freddy up and down, trying to wrap his mind around what he was seeing. First, something attacked him, then he woke up to Toy Foxy right in his face, now an old mascot of the pizzeria was talking to him. Where to start with this?

Jeremy inhaled and was about to say something, but stopped himself to try and think of better phrasing. He did this twice before Toy Freddy quirked his eyebrow and continued instead. “You...appear most bewildered, Mister Jeremy.”

That certainly made Jeremy stop and stare at him. “...How…? How did y’all know my…?”

“The Puppet told us,” Freddy replied as if this was a normal occurrence. “Shall I, erm... _elucidate_ your current situation to you…?”

Jeremy only eyed him with suspicion, but hesitantly muttered, “...I suppose…?”

“Very well then,” Toy Freddy said, suddenly taking a few quick steps forward and outpacing Jeremy as he went to the exit. “If you would please follow.” Jeremy hesitated for a second, but, deciding he was no longer in any real danger, slowly walked up to Toy Freddy, who waved him forward very politely. In a minute, they left, and walked the narrow halls of the back of the pizzeria. “By the by, due to us sharing this establishment with our, erm, how shall I put it…?” he began, _“Older_ counterparts, we have adopted the use of secondary names should any of us be in the same room with our doubles. Therefore…”

Toy Freddy extended his right hand across to Jeremy, who reflexively jumped back. “You may refer to me as ‘Red.’”

Jeremy looked at his hand, but shook it after a pause. “Pleasure meetin’ ya…” he said.

“Indeed,” Toy Freddy replied, “this pleasure is all mine. Thirty years, we have spent here; not once has...anybody been able to withstand the Puppet’s influence. We have studied each candidate, and the ones that were strong were chosen, yet not even they survived for a second after the process was complete. You must have an exceptionally strong will to internalize what they have done to you.”

“What…” Jeremy stuttered, “...what did...it...do to me, exactly?”

“One moment. I imagine you wish to know the events that transpired whilst you were unconscious, hmm?” Toy Freddy asked.

“...Yes.” Jeremy conceded.

“We simply brought you to the back room you found yourself in, though we did have to apply several packs of ice to keep your body temperature down,” Toy Freddy explained. “I, of course, remained in the room at all times, anticipating when you would wake up.”

Jeremy scratched his chin and replied, “Then why was-”

“I have no insight as to why Cherry, ‘Toy Foxy,’ as you may know her, was remaining so...unusually close to you,” Toy Freddy answered. “That might be something you should ask her yourself, assuming you can ever find her. She is probably the most timid living thing in this establishment.” They continued walking through the hallway, and eventually entered the back area of the pizzeria, behind the main entrance area where Freddy and his band was stationed. The back had significantly less tables and significantly more decoration. It allowed for more play space; the Toy line was aimed at younger kids, after all, but it made the two figures moving around near the stage stand out even more. As soon as Jeremy noticed them, he froze in place.

Toy Freddy was about to continue when he noticed Jeremy had tensed up, and looked over to where he was staring. When he saw what was happening, he couldn’t help but chuckle. As the two figures came into the light, it became clear what they were doing; both Toy Chica and Toy Bonnie were wearing indoor skates (where they got them from, Jeremy could only imagine), and were busy rolling around the area closest to the stage, and Chica was obviously far more experienced. Eventually, Toy Freddy decided this much fun could only end badly, and called, “Amber! Blue! Slow down and take those skates off!”

They both heard him, and Toy Chica skidded to a stop, and stared at Toy Freddy dejectedly. “Aw, but Red…!” she protested, “We were havin’ fun!”

“Yeah,” Toy Bonnie chimed in, “I don’t see anything wrong with- _ack!”_

He was cut short as, while trying to slow down, he pressed on the front of the skates too hard. Toy Bonnie tripped and fell, and rolled over himself a few times before he finally stopped, sprawled out on the floor face-down. Toy Freddy winced and stared at Toy Bonnie for a minute before groaning, “As I said, it’s all fun and games until someone loses half their-” He suddenly coughed and caught himself. “Someone loses an eye. Yes. That’s what I meant.”

Jeremy couldn’t help but laugh at Toy Bonnie’s blunder, though, subconsciously, he was rethinking everything he knew. _They’re like a family,_ he thought to himself. _A big, weird family, but still…_

When she heard him, Toy Chica turned around to look at Jeremy, and he, understandably, shut his mouth and tried to look as neutral as possible. To his complete surprise, however, Toy Chica smiled at him. “Oh, my God, you’re awake!” she exclaimed a she ran up to him. She was at least a few inches taller than Jeremy was, which did make him shrink back a little. “The boss and Blue told me about what was goin’ on, and when we brought you into the back, oh man, I was so worried! I thought you might not make it, and Puppet’s been sayin’ it’s countin’ on you two to come through for us and you _did...!”_ Toy Chica paused a second and stared off into the distance and added, “Erm, well, you did, but we don’t really know ‘bout the other guy, what’s his name…?”

“His name’s ‘Mike,’ ma’am,” Jeremy said. “...Red?” he asked, looking over at him, _“is_ he alive?”

“I imagine we’ll know soon enough,” Toy Freddy replied.

“Hey, hold on a minute, there!” Toy Bonnie pushed his way past Toy Freddy, having picked himself up in the interim, “Quit hogging the new guy all to yourself, huh, Am’?”

She looked at Toy Bonnie and rolled her eyes before taking a step back. “Jeez, if you wanna get to know him better, you can just _say_ so,” she teased.

Jeremy was too busy trying to keep up with what was happening to react much when Toy Bonnie stepped up to him and did a quick showman’s bow. “Heya! Name’s Blue, nice to finally meet you for real!” he exclaimed as he held out his hand. Jeremy paused and eventually reached out and shook, though he noticed Toy Bonnie staring him up and down, eyeing him like some sort of relic from an antique auction house. “Hmm…” he murmured, “Nice eyes, broad shoulders, _perfect_ profile, I gotta say...nice.” He let go of Jeremy’s hand and stood back up to full height. “Rock-solid eight outta ten, Jeremy, like _damn.”_ Almost immediately as those words left his mouth, he slapped his hand over his lips and after an awkward two seconds of silence he looked around sheepishly and asked, “Oh, God, did I _really_ just say that out loud…?” to no one in particular.

“Yes,” Toy Freddy deadpanned.

Toy Bonnie sheepishly looked back at Jeremy and rubbed the back of his neck. _“Heh-heh..._ Sorry about that, man, I, ah…” he trailed off, “Things just...I say stupid things sometimes.”

“Hey, it’s alright. I get’chu,” Jeremy replied, suddenly feeling much more at ease than before. Upon realizing that the animatronics, if they could still even be _called_ that by now, had their own personalities and quirks, he almost felt, dare he say...safe. “Though, I hate t’break it to ya, man, I don’t swing that way,” he added with a chuckle.

Toy Bonnie shrugged and commented, “Eh, what can you do…?”

“Now…” Toy Freddy interrupted, “Back to your previous question...you wish to know what the Puppet has bestowed upon you, yes?”

* * *

“...You lost me again,” Mike stated. He was sitting on a table, right foot up and resting on the surface, his hands folded over each other, and he was staring ahead like some sort of Bond villain.

Up on the stage, Bonnie groaned. He had been tuning his guitar, waiting for Freddy to explain the whole situation behind what had happened. Chica was standing next to Freddy, who was also sitting on the stage, and the bear himself sighed in defeat and wiped his face. Everyone had stayed close to the stage after a rather rousing verbal bout with Mike, who was _vehemently_ opposed to _any_ of them getting within twenty feet of him. The only exception he seemed to be making to this rule was Foxy, who had, very carefully, gone slightly closer to Mike over the past few minutes, and was now sitting at a table. Still, Foxy was about seventeen feet away; Mike was damn sure he stayed at arm’s length.

“A’right,” Freddy sighed, “One more time…?”

Mike continued to stare at Freddy over his folded hands for a second before he nodded. Slowly. “...Okay,” Freddy said. “One last time.” He breathed in and explained, as if he’d been rehearsing it, “Ya got somethin’ inside ya, son. What that thing is’s hard to say, but it’s somethin’ powerful. Fredbear gave ya that power, gave ya part a’himself-”

“Hold it,” Mike interrupted, “That. Right there...I don’t get it.”

“What...about it don’t ya get, son?” Freddy replied, trying not to sound exasperated.

“Honestly? Everything,” Mike said. “Like, ‘why why am I not dead?’ ‘Why are you telling me I’m a special snowflake?’ And why the _fuck_ is that…?” He stopped and blurted out, _“Yellow death machine_ in the basement? What kind of cosmic jackassery is this?”

“Listen, son, it’s hard to explain, but I guarantee ya it’ll make sense. Just…” He sighed and wiped his brow before continuing, “Just hear us out. We been plannin’ fer this.”

“Oh, cool, ya been plannin’ to confuse my ass. How long it take ya?” Mike snapped.

“Ain’t like that now, lad,” Foxy chimed in, “Fact is, ye be privy te a great secret.”

Mike stopped and looked over at Foxy who was still reclining in one of the booths. He squinted and said, “Enlighten me, please.”

“Oh, Gawd, he’s started’im off on a _big_ damn story,” Bonnie griped. Freddy turned to him and punched his shoulder.

Foxy cracked his knuckles and stretched his back, obviously making a big show of it, like he was about to spill the secrets of the universe itself. “Fredbear chose ye, led. I’unno what fer, but he chose ya. Malcolm told us, an’ we listen te what he says on behalf’a Fredbear. Now ye know what be happenin’ in here...ye know th’ secret that nobody else’s figured out. Ever.” He leaned back in the chair and stared back at Mike, who was only staring at him, seeming neither happy, sad, angry, or confused. He _did_ always pride himself on his poker face, but that was out of the question for now.

“...And that secret is that...you guys look like you walked off of a furry website?” he concluded.

This earned him some confused squinting from the band. “Te hell’s that…?” Foxy asked.

“Don’t worry ‘bout it,” Mike said as he waved his hands dismissively.

“Well, whatever it is, I’ll take dat as a compliment,” Bonnie added.

This caused Mike to choke after he felt his spit go down the wrong pipe. “Good. I’m glad,” he chuckled in between fits of coughing. He took a deep breath in and eventually got all the coughs out of his system and said, “For real, that secret is that you guys look like you’re living, breathing...well, _people,_ for lack of better terms.”

“That’s right, Mike,” Chica affirmed. “We look like that because we _are.”_

“Can I see an x-ray and get that in writing?” Mike asked with a snide grin.

Foxy huffed. “Ye punched me nose an’ saw th’ blood comin’ out, didn’ ye, lad?”

“...True,” Mike commented. “Alright, I’ll buy into it in light of no better explanation, but I’m still pretty skeptical, believe you me.”

Someone cleared their throat, and everyone in the area looked back toward one of the archways that led to the back of the pizzeria. Standing there was Jeremy, with Toy Freddy at his side, along with Toy Bonnie and Chica. “...Excuse me,” Toy Freddy began, “Are we interrupting here?”

“No you ain’t, son,” Freddy replied. “Y’all come on over here.”

Of course, they hadn’t walked so much as two steps before Mike noticed and yelled, “Jeremy, holy **shit...!** I thought you were dead! I thought you were right _fucked,_ my dude!”

Jeremy chuckled to himself and, showing he was already more accustomed to being around much taller and more imposing company than Mike, walked over to where he was sitting and took a seat in a chair next to him. “Nah, y’all gotta deal with me for awhile longer.”

“Shit.” Mike laughed to himself, which trailed off into a whisper as he leaned over to Jeremy’s ear. “Those guys tell ya what the hell’s goin’ on and why we’re not pushin’ up daisies yet?”

“Yeah,” Jeremy whispered back, “said some puppet put part of their soul inta me. Practically rebuilt it. I dunno how that works, but I’m alive, I guess.”

Mike scoffed. “Huh. Tells me more than you told me. Apparently, the old Fredbear suit’s alive, too, and pulled the same shit on me.” He elected to not go into any more detail than needed. Especially about that thing’s history.

Jeremy raised his brows and pursed his lips in thought. “Ain’t that the damndest thing.” He quickly looked back up and gave his full attention to the performers, if they had anything else to say. It seemed his suspicions were true, as Freddy stood up and tipped his hat.

“...Jeremy,” he said, “I don’t think I’ve properly introduced you to my family.” Jeremy glanced over at Mike and then got up out of his seat and made for the bear himself. Mike made a small move to hold his coat to stop him, but decided against it. After all, if he got hurt, it was his own fault. Tragic, but still….it was on him. To his admitted relief, he did not get to see Jeremy torn apart in front of his eyes. Instead, when Freddy held out his massive hand, Jeremy shook it. “I do believe y’all know my name.”

Jeremy cracked a grin. “Freddy Fazbear himself. Hard t’forget that face, or the faces of his crew.”

Chica chuckled. “The Puppet was right to choose you. A real gentleman and a sharp one to boot.”

“What, am I chopped liver now?” Freddy questioned with a small smile. Chica stopped and looked over at him before she giggled and put her arm around him.

“Now what would make you say that, boo bear?” she replied.

Freddy chuckled, though he tried his hardest to make as little sound as possible. Mike couldn’t help but grin at the two. Toy Freddy then entered the space in the center of the whole group and said, “With that out of the way, I believe it would be sensible if I introduced my coterie to Mister Michael.”

Mike was about to laugh and tell him he could “probably tell who they were by sound alone,” before Jeremy interrupted, “Hang on. Y’all mind if I ask somethin’ first?”

Toy Freddy looked over at him in mild surprise but didn’t seem all that bothered. In fact, he conceded, “Absolutely, Mister Jeremy. Do tell, please.”

“Who’s ‘Malcolm…?’” Jeremy asked.

As if in response, the lights flickered, prompting everyone to look up and glance around. Jeremy and Mike were the most adamant on finding what was causing the disturbance, yet nothing presented itself. There was only the sound of dull buzzing as the lights struggled to work. Then, suddenly and without warning, they winked out, only to come back on a second later. Nothing had changed...except now Jeremy and Mike saw the performers looking to the north west of the restaurant, toward Prize Corner. Naturally, they looked over there as well, and Mike nearly choked on his own spit again.

Striding toward them was the lanky, emaciated-looking Puppet. It seemed to be taller than even Mike, which in and of itself was unnerving, but the mask it wore seemed to convey what it felt without changing expression. Even more unsettling were its odd proportions; the arms seemed normal, if not thicker at the forearm, but while its torso was long, its legs looked to be twice that length, and the upper body-to-hip proportions made it look even stranger. It walked toward the group in a stride not unlike a model on a fashion runway, one leg perfectly in line and in front of the other. That was unremarkable. The fact that the Puppet was walking on thin air as if it were terra firma, however, was flat out bizarre.

It stopped in front of the whole group, turning the arrangement into a lone man looking upon a council, only in this case, the Puppet was a _one-man_ council...if such a being could be equated to a man. It looked around with no indication it’s eyes were moving; for some reason, it elected to not show its pupils, but it surveyed the gathered like a Catholic nun surveying her classroom at the start of the year. Ruler behind her back and all. _“I’m glad…”_ it began, _“that you have all...taken the chance...to familiarize yourselves...with each other…”_

It suddenly jumped, from its place a few feet away from the show stage right up onto it. It made no effort to be acrobatic; it was, simply, a jump, and the Puppet sailed through the air as if it was lighter than a feather. _“We have...much to discuss…And...much to plan for...”_

Mike remained enraptured with such an ethereal show of grace, and whispered over to Freddy, “Is that Malcolm…?”

Before he could answer, or even register what Mike was asking, the lights flickered again, only once, before a dull hum permeated the air again. It was different from the struggling lights from before, it was something everyone _felt._

_“Mm-mm._ That ain’t Sir Malcolm,” Foxy said, answering Mike’s question instead. He pointed down the corridor to the left. _“That_ be Sir Malcolm.”

They all looked, and beheld a roiling mass of grey-black smoke weaving down the hall, nearly invisible save for the distortions it seemed to exude from its very being. It came closer, ever closer, until rearing up about ten feet away from the whole group. Mike and Jeremy stared at it with shock bordering on fear, but the performers watched with something more akin to higher regards; indeed, perhaps even reverence.

Then, slowly, the smoke began to condense in some places, slowly taking form, becoming whole in the shape of the black Fredbear animatronic suit, yellow hat and tie and all. He said nothing for a minute, simply opting to walk forward another two steps before issuing a rough, yet somehow quite genteel, “Howdy.”

And before anyone could reply back, Mike had nearly tossed his cookies and dove backward over the table he was sitting on. He sputtered in panic as he ran another couple steps before vaulting over a smaller square table and pulling down with him, turning into a makeshift shield, and remained there. After a minute, Mike poked his head out to see if Malcolm was still there, and upon seeing it was true, hastily groped around for anything he could use as a weapon. He managed to grab a noise maker that fell on the ground, but in lieu of nothing else, he took it and hid behind the table again.

“Y’all asked fer me?” he continued, seemingly ignoring Mike’s panic attack. This was answered by all the entertainers with a dutiful, “Sir,” save for the Puppet. Malcolm himself looked over at the spindly sack of cloth and approached.

It bowed, though not too deeply, with polite, but oddly monotone, _“Mister Riche.”_

Jeremy was both impressed...and slightly unnerved. The undisputed show of respect for Malcolm seemed even greater than their respect for the Puppet, which _really_ made him wonder just how powerful Malcolm was. After seeing what the Puppet had done so far, he didn’t doubt it was capable of something crazy.

_“Mister Fitzgerald...”_ Puppet said, _“This...is Mister Riche...He is...a friend...and…like-minded partner...”_

“I, uh…” Jeremy stared long and hard up at Malcolm. He was obviously more of some sort of ghost than even the Puppet, considering that, closer to the center of each of his body parts, everything went transparent, and he could see the machinery inside of the costume. “P...pleasure t’meet ya, sir,” he stuttered, tentatively holding out his hand. Malcolm looked down at him and shook and, much to his surprise, his touch was supernaturally cold, yet didn’t feel as uncomfortable as he expected. It was miles better than getting his hand crushed, at least.

After a minute, he looked around and looked back at where Mike was hiding, and saw him quickly duck behind the table again. Jeremy couldn’t help but laugh. “Mike, what’s wrong with ya, man?” he called. “I get it, he _looks_ kinda scary, but he’s friendly!”

“Tell that overweight ursine he can burn in hell!”

Jeremy felt his stomach flip itself over and he looked back at Malcolm. _Everyone_ looked at Malcolm with the same terrified expression, fully expecting him to tear into Mike; the Puppet was the only one retaining a neutral expression. Yet, for some reason, he sighed and shook his head. “Must’a gave the kid more’ve a scare’n I thought,” he said flatly.

Everyone continued to stare at him, almost in shock, that he hadn’t at least bellowed at Mike for using such a comment. Jeremy turned back to Malcolm and cleared his throat. “Erm...I’m...I’m _very_ sorry about that, sir. Mike doesn’t…” He pause to consider his words and then continued, “He doesn’t attack someone like that without any reason, I’m _so_ sorry.”

“Don’t y’all worry none,” Malcolm replied, looking back down at Jeremy. “I got thick skin...or at least, thick platin’.” He chuckled.

_“We imagine...you have questions…”_ Puppet cut in. _“Now...would be the best time...to ask them...if you still wish…”_

Jeremy only waited a second, to make sure Mike didn’t say anything before he asked, “For one thing...how come no one’s caught on to this whole ruse yet?”

_“Quite simple...I have enough power...to edit security files...and make it seem as if...nothing happens at night…”_ Puppet explained.

“Oh, but you should’ve seen...ah, shoot, what’s-his-name?” Toy Bonnie asked himself. He snapped his fingers a couple times and looked over at Toy Freddy. “Red…?”

Toy Freddy scratched his chin and answered, “Joe… Josef, I think-”

“Yeah!” he exclaimed, “Josef! Man, you guys should’ve seen him, tryin’ to explain what he saw to Shannon and Oswald that one time! God, they looked at him like he’d escaped an asylum!”

“Oh, my Gawd, shut _up,”_ Bonnie growled under his breath.

“I got one.”

The whole group turned around to Mike, who must have felt safe enough to lean on the table he was using as cover. He was still covered up by it from the waist down, though. _“Why?”_

Before Jeremy could ask “Why what?” he actually heard Freddy reply, “Kid’s got a point.” He turned to the Puppet and said, “Ya been stringin’ us along on this plan’a yours for near thirty years now. This mean we finally get an explanation?”

The Puppet said nothing. It made no indications to move anywhere, standing up on the stage, only staring. Staring at the gathered throng, its eyes darting back and forth behind the mask of white. Then, finally, it spoke.

_“...He is coming back,”_ was its reply.

While cryptic, only Mike and Freddy seemed to know what this entailed. There was muttered whispers of “Who?” “Who’s coming back?” among everyone else. _“You know...about whom I speak…”_ Puppet continued, _“I have been able...to shelter you here...But I fear...not for much longer…”_

“This ain’t about who I think it be...right…?” Foxy piped up. There was tangible worry in his eyes, but it seemed to be kept in control by blind hope.

_“I’m afraid so…”_ Puppet said. The whispers rose to indistinct chatter, which grew in volume slightly until the Puppet raised its hands, asking for silence, which, unsurprisingly, everyone obeyed. _“This...was my plan...I knew he wouldn’t...be able to...stay away...That is why we…”_ it continued, motioning to Malcolm, _“...Have tried to impart our gifts...onto others…”_

Suddenly, it gestured extravagantly with its arms to Jeremy and Mike. _“But with this success...our fears...will be abated…”_ It suddenly jumped again, landing gracefully and without a sound in front of Jeremy, who jumped and stumbled backward. _“You...have received my gift...Mister Fitzgerald…”_ it said, _“When I found you...I did...what I imposed on them…”_ The Puppet gestured back at the group and continued, _“I recast their souls...in a mold of...my own making...freeing them...of death...of disease...of all things...until our work could finally be...over…”_ It looked back at Jeremy, and for once, its face seemed to sink. Perhaps it was tiredness; perhaps it was begging. Either way, it stared Jeremy directly in his eyes and said, _“And what I have given you...is much like this gift...We are bonded...through soul...and now...you will be able...to accomplish feats...the likes of which...any normal man would deem...impossible.”_

Jeremy was stunned into silence from such a, frankly, bold proclamation. Malcolm himself turned and looked at Mike, who tensed up and ducked back down again. “An’ that’s what I done to you,” he said, pointing at Mike. “Or at least, the kid did. He gave ya part’a ‘imself, help ya do what he can do.” Malcolm crossed his arms and commented, “I jus’ speak fer’im.”

“He can _keep_ his ‘gift,’” Mike muttered to himself.

The Puppet quickly stepped out of the center of the crowd, striding back toward Prize Corner, saying _“We have...little time left to...prepare...and already...our time grows short...tonight...Return tomorrow…”_ it instructed, _“And then...you will know...the extent...of yourself…”_

As it walked, Malcolm followed, taking heavy, lumbering steps that never made a sound on the tiled floor. “Figgered he wasn’t gonna be all too happy to see me,” Malcolm mused after they walked a few dozen feet away.

The Puppet extended a long, silvery thread of ghostly energy from its palm that snaked up into the rafters. It attached to something, and the Puppet stretched it taut. _“Forgiveness takes time.”_ Without another word, it yanked on the cord and pulled itself up and completely out of sight, in the darkness above the neon lights.

Meanwhile, after another moment of tense silence, Freddy stood up and dusted his vest off. “Puppet’s right,” he stated. “It’s gettin’ late. Y’all should rest a bit,” he said to Jeremy and Mike, “an’ we’re gonna turn in, too.”

“Whatever you say, boss,” Mike said as he walked out around the table.

“Before ya do,” he continued, prompting Mike and jeremy to stop and look over at him, “lemme ask ya somethin’...” His sclera suddenly went black, save for two two sky-blue rings that appeared on his eyes. The two boys froze, and Mike felt his blood run cold for a moment. “We can count on ya to come back tomorrow...right?”

Mike was too stunned to silence to say anything, but to his amazement, jeremy managed to blurt out, “Absolutely,” without missing a beat or sounding petrified.

Freddy stood back up to full height, his eyes returning to normal. “...See that ya do.” With that, he turned and waved his hand, noting for everyone to disperse. Mike and jeremy watched them all go, and was pretty sure Bonnie took a furtive glance back at them and scoffed under his breath. The two of them went back to the security office set into the wall behind the main stage and waited in silence.

“...Hey, Mike?” Jeremy asked after awhile. “You okay?”

“Shaken, not stirred,” he scoffed in reply. Mike hadn’t even picked up his 3DS and started playing it again.

Jeremy chuckled to himself and went back to watching the cameras. There was no more movement on them, and he had no clue where the performers had gone to rest (though he had somewhat of a guess for the Puppet, but that was all). He was silent for another few minutes before he leaned on the desk and asked, “What’cha think of all this, Mike?”

Mike glanced back up at him, having sunk into his chair while staring at the open steel doors. “What do I think…?” he replied. He paused...then scoffed bitterly. “I think we got ourselves into some serious shit.”

* * *

The night air of early autumn stung at the skin and eyes, its chilling touch inescapable. At the point where the lot of _Freddy Fazbear’s_ touched the road sat a beat-up looking car, near black save for some green flames spray-painted over the metal above the wheels. Four boys stood there, staring dead ahead at the darkened pizzeria, one leaning on the car hood, three standing almost in rank and file a few feet ahead, and directly in front of them was Francisco. He was doing nothing. Nothing but glaring daggers at the building and the happy facade that served as the logo over the doors.

“Do we _really_ have’ta go in’nere, boss…?” one of the boys said.

Francisco whipped his head around to glare at the kid, who squeaked and retracted as he took a step forward and brought his face uncomfortably close. “Jason, let me put it _this_ way…” he articulated, “Either you’re going to go in there, or I’ll **drag** you in there _with_ me.”

“Got it boss…!” Jay replied smalley.

Francisco kept glaring dead into his eyes for another minute before standing back up straight. “...Any other questions, numbskulls?”

Deafening silence.

“Good. Reese, get the car ready. I’ll be there in a few seconds, now all of you, **get.”** Francisco remained stationary while his cronies booked it toward the car. He felt something creep up his face after a minute; a mask, blackening the skin around his eyes, turning them as purple as bruises, and felt his mouth move, his vocal chords shudder, without his direct input.

_“You little brats have evaded me for long enough, but no more. If you won’t_ give _me what’s rightfully mine...I will_ **_take_ ** _it from you.”_


	5. Assorted Housekeeping One

Assorted Housekeeping One 

They were tasked with coming back early the next day. The night itself had passed uneventfully, and upon opening up, Mike and Jeremy were greeted by none other than Shannon and Oswald themselves. By then, the not-animatronics had already taken their places back onstage, and Mike and Jeremy reviewed the security footage that had been recorded out of curiosity. Sure enough, it looked like the place had been silent the whole night. Once they got home, Mike locked himself in his room and slept like a log. Jeremy was stuck cleaning the apartment, but he didn’t mind; at this point, it was a necessary part of life.

Jeremy shut the radio off as they pulled into the lot. There was another murder, of twins, no less, and Jeremy was very vocal about how displeased he was with the police for not doing anything. Even as, Mike pointed out, that whoever or whatever was causing all this left _no_ evidence to be traced.

He and Mike jumped out of the car and sauntered in. Jeremy noticed that Freddy and the gang were all onstage, and looked like how they did last night, after _that_ whole escapade. On top of that, Freddy noticed them come in and gave them a curt little nod in between lines he was “scheduled” to deliver. Mike pretended not to notice at all. It was just as crowded as the day before, which was not saying much. There were a surprising amount of returning visitors; they made up almost a quarter of the people there, and Mike was busy people-watching from their booth in a room to the east.

“Christ,” Mike muttered as he stared back over his shoulder at a whole group of elementary schoolers hollering and mocking each other while playing arcade basketball, “shouldn’t these little bastards be in school right now?”

Jeremy leaned back and sighed. “Some of’em might be homeschooled. Some might have the day off, y’all don’t know.”

Mike took out his phone and checked it before staring dead at Jeremy and stating, “It’s twelve in the afternoon and I’m pretty sure these little shits ain’t out at recess.”

“Like I said, y’all don’t know. And be nice for once in ya life, huh?”

Mike scoffed. “I’d sooner die.”

It was then Jeremy noticed someone round the corner, dressed in the same snappy dress and blazer. He got up as Shannon approached and stood at attention, while Mike, as per usual, took one look back and groaned. She pushed her glasses up and cleared her throat. “Mister Fitzgerald. Glad to see you back. Your first night went smoothly?”

Jeremy bowed his head slightly. “Smooth as ice, ma’am.” He heard Mike huff and prayed he wouldn’t make any more smartass comments. “Silent night, all night.”

“Excellent!” Shannon replied, “I won’t keep bothering you each time your shift starts, but I reviewed the footage and decided…” She caught herself from saying something, coughed, and continued, “ _Oswald and I_ decided to allow Mister Schmidt with you on subsequent shifts. With pay, of course.”

Both the boys’ eyes went wide and they looked at each other. “So you’re...hirin’ him, basically?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s fantastic!” Jeremy said, not sure whether to be enthusiastic or worried. “I think that’s a great idea!”

By now, Mike was glaring daggers at Jeremy, shaking his head and hissing “No. No. _No,_ you dumb slut,” to him while trying not to draw any attention to his displeased expression.

“I was initially indecisive on the idea, but Mister Weatherby believes it’s a smart move,” she continued, unaware of Mike’s protests.

Jeremy only scratched his chin in response. “...Interestin’.”

She paused for a moment, but then turned around and said, “Anyway, I’ll leave you both to it. Make sure nothing breaks or goes wrong, as per usual,” as she walked away.

Mike and Jeremy watched her go, and Mike waited a good few minutes before he hissed out, “Cunt.”

“Mike!” Jeremy exclaimed, “Be nice! Just ‘cause y’all hear somethin’ ya don’t like from ya boss doesn’t mean-”

“I’m talking about that Oswald prick,” Mike cut him off. “God, I _really_ wanna give that guy a talking to.” He went silent and stayed in his chair, motionless and silently fuming. Then, he got up and turned toward the archway. “Think I _will.”_

He took only one step before Jeremy latched onto his arm and called, “Oh, no, no, no,” as he yanked him back. “Y’all ain’t gettin’ fired first day on the job if I got anything t’say about it.”

“What? Fuck you!” Mike cried incredulously. He ignored Jeremy’s shushing and continued, _“I_ didn’t _ask_ to sign up, they never _told_ me they wanted to sign me up, I’m not staying on this mystery cruise of voodoo fuckery! Now lemme go!”

Jeremy yanked on Mike’s sleeve, causing him to stumble backward and yelp. Jeremy caught him before he fell over completely and pushed him back into his chair and stood over him while giving him the stinkeye. “I get it,” he began, “y’all don’t like bein’ told this. T’be honest, I think it’s pretty shady, too, how they didn’t even tell ya nothin’ before springing it on ya. But y’all listen here…” He glared at Mike even harder, and Mike actually shrunk a little. “This’s a _good_ thing. Y’all can stay here each night, makin’ it easier t’help Puppet with...y’know, whatever it wants. If y’all didn’t get this job, stickin’ around each night’d get awful suspicious, if I was on the outside looking in.”

Jeremy eased up and stepped away, allowing Mike to get back up and launch a dirty look right back at him. “The extra cash y’all gonna make ain’t gonna hurt either,” he added.

“It’s not all about money, y’know,” he countered snidely.

Jeremy was about to call him out when someone else leaned in around the corner. He was dressed in a uniform stained with grease and dirt and was holding a mop. “You’re Mike, right?” he asked, seemingly ignoring Jeremy.

“Whaddaya fuckin’ want?”

Without hesitating, the man tossed the mop to Mike, who somehow managed to catch it. “Someone threw up in the ballpit,” he said, “Had too much cake. I’m gonna need help going through everything to get it clean.”

Mike stared at him like he had walked in on someone banging his mother, but after a sideways glance to Jeremy, he relented and marched out of the room. Jeremy managed to catch the tail end of something along the lines of, “Fuckin’ idiot kids, I hate’em.”

* * *

Jeremy hadn’t seen Mike for awhile after that. He did hear some yelling from the kitchen when he walked by, and one voice was significantly louder and angrier than the rest. He couldn’t pin it until he overheard “For Christ’s sake, Pepsi’s a dime-a-dozen for companies like this, go bitch to your boss about it!”

He had to stifle a chuckle. Mike could be a prick sometimes, but his antics were funny. At least to listen to. “Poor Missus Schmidt,” he said to himself. He continued walking around until he passed the Prize Corner and heard something mildly distressing. Someone was crying. On top of being the bleeding heart he was, he was doubly concerned about the possible well-being of a child. Knowing the company’s history with kids, he was understandably on edge.

So he was quite relieved when he jumped into the room and saw a little girl standing in front of a Chica stuffed toy that was almost as big as her. She was holding a bunch of tickets in her hand as well, so there obviously wasn’t any physical trauma involved. He slowly and quietly walked up to her and cleared his throat to get her attention and it worked. She stopped crying momentarily and looked up at him in surprise. “Are ya alright, sweetie?”

She sniffled a bit before looking back at the Chica plush. It was contained in a glass display cage. Said cage was connected to a locking mechanism that, if he understood correctly, only opened up when tickets were inserted and exchanged. For only being a chain popular in one state, it was surprising how much of the customer satisfaction was automated.

“...Chi...Chica cosths twenty tickeths, misther,” she stammered, trying to keep herself from crying again. “I thought I had enough, but I mustht’ve lost sthome.” She brought up the tickets she was holding and then stared longingly back at the doll.

“How many you got?” he asked.

“...Eleven.”

“Hmm…”Jeremy pursed his lips and thought for a moment. “Ain’t there anything ya can buy with eleven tickets?”

“No!” she cried, “I’ve been trying to get tickeths the whole day and I don’t wanna leave without Chica! I need it...!”

She started sniffling again and was about to cry before Jeremy placed his hand on her shoulder and said in as calming a voice as he could, “I can help ya, then.”

The little girl stared at him as wide-eyed as if he’d just given her a ticket to Disney World. “...R...really…?”

“Yeah!” he exclaimed. “With the both’a us workin’ together, we’ll get all the tickets ya need and then some!”

Her smile practically lit up the room, and Jeremy took her by the hand, leading her out and across the pizzeria, over to the arcade section. “What’cha wanna play, sweetie?”

“Well, I’m the bestht as whack-a-mole,” she stated, “So I’ll play that!”

“You got it,” Jeremy chuckled. They kept walking through the main area. The curtains were closed, which made the movement to the left stand out more. Jeremy turned his head, and saw an old man, dressed in a mahogany-brown suit. He limped his way to a table, sat himself down, and clasped his hands together on top of it, and only seemed to stare around absentmindedly.

“Misther…? Are you okay?”

Jeremy turned back to see the girl was now a good dozen or so feet in front of him and he picked up his pace and followed her back to the arcade.

* * *

After only twenty minutes of playing arcade basketball, whack-a-mole, and bowling, Jeremy was holding over thirty tickets, all of which he gladly gave to the girl. Her little arms were practically having trouble holding them all up and keeping them in one place.

“Thankths, misther...!” she called as she ran off, rounded a corner, and disappeared.

Jeremy watched her go, adjusting the cap on his head and smiling. He walked out of the arcade as well, back into the stage area dominated by the original animatronics. As he looked around, he saw the same old man sitting in the same seat. He wasn’t eating. He didn’t even have a drink. He was just...looking around; like a child entering the location for the first time. Jeremy also noticed that Shannon was also walking through the room, and seemed to be heading for the stairwell up to the second floor. Granted, the old man wasn’t directly causing any problems, but Shannon seemed to casually pass him by. Jeremy started jogging, going to his right and meeting up with Shannon at the foot of the stairs.

She looked up when she heard his footsteps and quickly straightened her posture, holding her clipboard close to her chest. “Mister Fitzgerald, you need something?”

“Yeah,” he said, “I just got a question…” He turned his head to look at the man still sitting at the table and whispered, “...Who’s that? Should I ask him t’leave…?”

Shannon initially looked puzzled, but glanced at who Jeremy was pointing at and sighed when she understood. “Oh, no, that’s just Hector Emmerson. He showed up about three years ago, and he comes in almost every other day.”

Jeremy raised an eyebrow. “And he ain’t been a problem?”

Shannon shook her head. “Oh, no. In fact, we ran his name through a database when we asked, and he said he worked in _Fredbear’s_ for a number of years. Everything checked out, and he doesn’t bother anyone...though I will admit, for awhile, I was fearing the worst.”

Jeremy was still looking at Hector. “That’d make’im...almost sixty years old, right?” he asked almost involuntarily.

Shannon paused for a moment to work out the addition and added, “Sixty-three, to be precise.” She adjusted her glasses and cleared her throat after a pause. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to go continue writing my reports and projected revenue tables.”

“Ah, sorry, ma’am. G’head.” Shannon nodded at Jeremy and hurried up the stairs. He remained staring after her for a moment, but then he looked back at Hector. Still sitting there, doing nothing, bothering nobody. Something, in the back of his mind, told him to go over and talk to him.

So he did.

Jeremy cleared his throat, causing Hector to whip his head to the side, but he seemed to remain calm, and his face uplifted slightly upon seeing Jeremy. “Oh! Why, hello there!” he exclaimed. He sounded just like Jeremy expected him to; the kindly old retiree down the street with several grandkids that he spoiled rotten at every chance. Hector looked him up and down for a moment before adding, “...I don’t believe I’ve seen you around here before, my friend. I’m Hector Emmerson, who’re you?”

Jeremy tipped his cap. “Mister Emmerson,” he began. He cleared his throat and continued, “And my name’s Jeremy. Jeremy Fitzgerald.”

“Fitzgerald,” Hector repeated. “Any relation to-”

“Nah, not t’the writer,” he replied with a laugh, “Most of the family still lives down south, where it’s warmer.”

“Ah, well,” Hector replied with a smile still on his face, “I thought I’d ask, just in case. You never know who you might meet in the most innocuous situations.” He paused and checked around for something, but eventually motioned for the chair across from him and added, “Oh, please, sit! This job makes it a pain to stand around for long periods of time, trust me.”

Jeremy laughed when he said that and replied, “I’ll take ya word for it, sir,” and sat down. “‘Specially since y’all worked for the old entertainment company back in the day, if I understand ya right.”

Hector laughed and leaned back in his chair. “You understand correct, my friend. Oh, the stories I could tell ya!” he exclaimed. He quickly straightened himself back up and continued, with a mellow voice, “Probably something I shouldn’t share with someone I just met, though.” Hector gave him a quick wink after that.

“Ah, yeah,” Jeremy admitted. He rubbed the back of his neck and added, “Actually, if ya don’t mind my askin’, why do y’all keep comin’ here? Don’t ya order anything? Go use the arcade, maybe?”

Hector chuckled. “I don’t really do anything, no. I just sit her for…” He checked his watch and continued, “Erm...about two hours, hour-and-a-half.”

Jeremy quirked an eyebrow. “And y’all don’t get bored?”

“Nope,” he replied, “I just sit here and be alone with my thoughts. And I get to see just how to ol’ business is chugging along.” Jeremy’s smile faltered some and Hector must have noticed. “And it ain’t doin’ too hot, from what I’ve seen.”

Jeremy shook his head. “I’m real sorry, sir.”

“Sorry?” Hector asked, “why would _you_ feel sorry?”

“‘Cause,” he began, “y’all used to work here...Well, not _here,_ here, but y’all was in this company. One’a the first, and I don’t imagine watchin’ it all come crashin’ down feels good.”

Hector chuckled a bit again; but that laughter, what little of it there was, died off after a few seconds, and he stared at the main stage wistfully. “...No. No, it doesn’t.”

“Jefferson!”

Jeremy and Hector both turned to quickly face the voice and saw Mike walking up to them with a disgruntled expression. He stopped right in front of Jeremy and continued, “Where the hell you been? I’ve had to fill your shoes for the past, like, _hour!”_

“Sorry, Mike, I-”

“Ah, buck up, friend,” Hector interrupted. It earned him a death glare from Mike, as the old man _obviously_ had no idea what Mike went through. “A little hard work helps build character and reinforce values.”

Mike stared dumbfounded at Hector before glaring at Jeremy. “Where’d this saggy sack’a white hair walk in from, huh? ‘Unsound and Over-the-Hill Mental Asylum?’”

Jeremy gritted his teeth and promptly stood up and scolded, “For Christssake, Mike! Can’t y’all learn some common decency!? Hector’s here, mindin’ his own business, an’ ya treat’im like a convict!”

“He tells me, ‘oh, hard work builds character,’” Mike repeated mockingly, “when he hasn’t had to clean not only puke that some little brat left in the ball pit, but then had to _immediately_ go and supervise another whiny little shit’s birthday party and help clean pizza sauce and cheese off the damn **walls…”** He took a deep breath in and shot out like a machine gun, “And _then_ had to go and wash a truckload of cheap-ass frosting and fondant out of Toy Freddy’s fur…!”

Mike took a second to breathe in before leaning in and whispering, “And, boy, was _that_ awkward as _shit,”_ to Jeremy.

“Mister Hector, I’m _real_ sorry about Mike here.” He turned and gave Mike another dirty look. “Never learned respect for his elders.” 

After a quick pause, Hector laughed, and pretty hard at that. Mike and Jeremy only looked at him for awhile before Jeremy cleared his throat again and said, “Uh...sir…?”

“Goodness gracious, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much dynamic between two people before. Like watching a comedy sketch without having to pay!” Hector said in between stifled laughs. Jeremy and Mike remained silent, for Jeremy because he didn’t know how to react, and Mike was almost convinced the man had mental problems. “But Jeremy here _is_ right, Mike, if I can call you that. Respect your elders.”

“Whatever, grandpa,” Mike said under his breath.

Jeremy didn’t hear Mike and only stared at him with an expression that said “I told you so” before looking back at Hector and telling him, “Hey, Mister Emmerson, we probably gotta get back on the job, so if you’ll excuse us…”

“Oh, by all means!” Hector replied, “Don’t let me hold you boys up. And please…” He stood up just to bow his head to the two of them. “Just call me ‘Hector.’”

Jeremy smiled and waved as he grabbed Mike’s arm and tugged him along before he could say anything remotely rude. “Don’t be such strangers, either! Talking with someone else isn’t a luxury I get much of any more,” he called after them.

As they walked away, Jeremy could clearly feel Mike turn around and call back, “See ya ‘round, Ol’ Man Hector!”

Jeremy didn’t even hesitate to stomp on his shoe.

* * *

Mike punched his keycard into the port on the plexiglass case and watched it pop open. He flicked four of the seven switches off and the pizzeria immediately got significantly darker. Mike took a look around; the whole place looked about the same as it did last night. He grimaced. “Back to the freakshow we go,” he muttered.

He stepped out of the utility closet and walked down the hall. It was one of the halls in the back of all the other attractions, going around several arcade and private party rooms, which meant it was pretty long. Shannon had told him (and Oswald had reinforced it) that he was to do a sweep of the “perimeter hallways” every night, as he was the best-choice candidate to spot anything amiss. Which he equated to mean “new blood does the boring work.”

“Either that or get shot first if someone breaks in,” he muttered to himself. Of course, he got through running one corridor no problem. Running the second, well…

As Mike rounded the corner, he noticed that tall, inky-black bulky figure marching perpendicular to him. He knew Malcolm was walking across the three-way stop at the end of the hall, but coupled with the fact that he was a ghost, it almost looked like he was walking through walls. And to make matters worse, it looked like Malcolm had spotted _him,_ too.

Mike spluttered and backtracked around the corner of the hall again, accompanied by a resigned, “Noooope, nope nope nope nope nope, **fuck** nope.” He didn’t want to see that walking abomination two nights in a row, _especially_ know that he knew he could be around any corner he damn well chose.

Leaving the perimeter corridors completely, Mike decided to go explore Pirate’s Cove a bit more thoroughly. He hadn’t gotten a good look at it the first night, on account of being freaked out by Foxy and then getting manhandled by Bonnie, so he figured now was as good a time as ever. Especially with that unnatural mistake of nature on the prowl. He rounded some corners, walked down the hall, and carefully parted the curtain to the attraction. With the lights and the time, he could now see that, by itself, the Cove took up about the size of two party rooms, used, obviously, to entertain kids with either preprogrammed stories or a small act. He knew that Foxy had always been more renowned as a “storyteller”; he used to be able to recite more than a few of them off the top of his head a few years back, but in the turmoil called ‘his life’ that followed, he’d forgotten a hefty chunk.

“Oi…!”

Mike stopped and faced the large ship in the center of Pirate’s Cove, where the voice had come from. “Who goes thar? Footsteps’re too light te be Freddy ‘r th’ like. Be ye Mike ‘r Jeremy?”

Mike grinned as he called back, “How ‘bout you mind your own goddamned business?” light-heartedly.

He saw Foxy poke his head out from the entrance to his room in the ship like a curious cat. “...Aye, ye be Mike a’ight. What’cha need, lad?”

Mike shrugged. “Nothin’, really,” he replied.

“Hmm…” Foxy hummed. In a second, his head disappeared back into his abode and Mike then saw him swing out and clamber down the ladder, lithe and deft, down to the floor. “Got te feelin’ ye ain’t givin’ Foxy te whole story,” he said.

Mike paused and pursed his lips and answered, “Thought it’d be a good idea to...talk to one’a you, since...y’know, that puppet’s makin’ us work together and all that bull.” Foxy only stared at him and raised a questioning eyebrow. Mike sighed and rolled his eyes. “Okay, okay, ya got me. Just saw Malcolm “I-eat-pricks-like-you-for-breakfast” Riche walkin’ around and bolted,” he said. Mike paused. “Does he _usually…?”_

“Wander ‘round?” Foxy finished for him. “Aye, he does’at some nights. Stays in te basement oth’rwise.”

“Yeah, well, either way...Figured it wouldn’t hurt to familiarize myself with Pirate’s Cove...”

Foxy grinned and walked up to Mike. Foxy was even taller than the rest of his group combined, standing at least a solid head over Freddy himself; Mike was tall for his age, and the pirate still came close to dwarfing him, although most of that height was due to the fact he was a beanpole. Little, if any, muscle. The only thing remotely menacing about Foxy were his fangs and claws, and possibly his eyes. A toothy grin spread across Foxy’s face, but Mike found it more endearing than scary. “Well!” he declared, “I be glad te see yer takin’ an int’rest in te _best_ member’a te Fazbear crew! I’ll admit…” He trailed off in a chuckle and bent down a bit to whisper, “I took ye more fer th’ type who’d like that dumb-bunny more’n I.”

“Bonnie?” Mike scoffed. “Fuck that. He’s cool, but he sure ain’t ‘badass pirate’ cool.”

That comment made Foxy rear back up and preen the fur on his head. Mike even heard a prideful chortle and was pretty sure he was blushing under all that hair on his muzzle. “Blimey, lad…! Ne’er took ye fer flattery either…”

“Hey, shut it an’ show me around, huh?” Mike interjected, sporting a grin of his own. Foxy looked back down at him and after a second they both started to laugh, in a subdued fashion.

“Why, it’d be me pleasure,” Foxy replied.

He started walking away toward the faux buildings of Tortuga and Mike followed, though he did add, “Hey, by the way...tell me some of your old stories, if ya remember’em.”

* * *

* * *

A/N: I was extremely blessed that I only had two real finals to worry about before Christmas break. Anyway, hope _your_ Christmas was fantastic if you celebrate it. If you don’t, I hope you had a fantastic Hanukkah/Omisoka/Kwanzaa/Yule/whatever it might be, and you got some awesome gifts. I, for one, got a new drawing tablet and DnD book supplement that I can read,  so, uh…yeah

merr’ crimbis


	6. Overexposure to Board Games May Lead to Harsh Language, Brutal Maulings, and Death

It was hard to believe he’d been doing this for two days already. Jeremy scoffed. It was hard to believe _Mike_ had put up with it for two days, of all people. The day shift was loud and barely allotted them time for breaks, now that they had been fully interred within the machinations of the industry. It was probably the hardest he’d worked in a long while, and the hardest Mike had probably worked in his life. Though, while it had been vigorous, the night shift outpaced it in terms of the pure scale of what happened.

The Puppet had contacted him, through some sort of telepathic link, on his second shift. At least, Jeremy assumed that. He swore he heard its voice in the presence of Toy Chica and Toy Freddy, but they denied hearing anything. Yet they both confirmed the Puppet had done it before, so Jeremy went with the whole “scrying” thing. When he went to talk to it, the Puppet taught him something amazing; being bound by soul, he found his stamina enhanced, his strength magnified thrice over, his reflexes honed to such a degree he could catch a dropped cup almost the second it left the hand. And on top of all that, he could now manifest a slew of abilities any normal person could only call “magic.”

Jeremy checked the console and the status of the cameras. Wiring said it was all okay, no obvious problems in the system...another smooth night.

He leaned back in his chair and gazed idly around. He felt calm enough to fall asleep, but knew that was...not a good idea. He had to keep himself awake somehow, and decided now was as good a time as any to pull out his phone and sketchpad. _After all, someone’s gonna have to make sure Mike doesn’t burn this place down,_ he thought. It made him chuckle.

For a moment, he could hear the faint clicking of skates on the tile floor and a moment later, he saw Toy Chica skate by the left door of the office. He glanced over and called, “Be careful, there, Amber!”

“I’m always careful!” she chirped back.

Jeremy shook his head and went back to watching the cameras, and kept a closer eye on Toy Chica as he saw her skate by several hallway and party-room cameras. The boredom must get bad if the performers took to roller-skating through the restaurant, of all things. He leaned back in the chair and stretched and was about to go back to looking over the cameras one last time before he got a drink, but he felt something in his bones urge him to get up. There was a small voice in the back of his mind, too.

So he sighed, smiled, and left the office, making for Prize Corner. The room was dimly lit, as usual, and Jeremy made his way to the display in the back; as if on cue, the Puppet began rising out of the box it had claimed. Jeremy smiled and bowed his head politely. “Y’all rang for me?”

 _“Yes…”_ the Puppet said. _“How do you feel...your mastery over...the veil...is…?”_

“I mean…” Jeremy brought out his hand and concentrated, and a silvery strand of ghostly material sprung into existence and wound its way into the air. Jeremy let it settle for a moment, waving back and forth even without any crossbreeze. “...I been workin’ on it.”

The Puppet stared at the strad for a moment before nodding solemnly. _“And...it has paid off…”_ it said. _“I can now feel...that you...are almost ready…”_

Jeremy quirked an eyebrow and the strand of light dissipated. “Ready for...what, exactly...?”

The Puppet sighed, although it sounded more like a pained moan, as it settled back into its box. _“For...the inevitable…”_ was its only answer.

“What’s inevitable?” Jeremy asked again, now slightly more unnerved.

As the Puppet lowered itself into its box, it made direct eye contact with Jeremy with its ice-white pupils, freezing him to the spot. The Puppet seemed to breathe in again and sighed, _“The inevitability...of conflict…”_

It took Jeremy a minute of thinking, but when he did, he started to protest, but it was too late. The lid of the box closed completely, and even as Jeremy asked, over and over again, what the Puppet meant by “conflict,” he couldn’t pry the lid off the box. Eventually, he was alone in the room with the faint sound of a music box playing in the background. He looked around, as if expecting an answer to come floating out of the darkness like some sort of black angel.

After no such thing happened, Jeremy sighed and left Prize Corner, trudging through the hallways, arbitrarily looking for Mike. He passed through the main show area in his searches and could see Bonnie tuning his guitar on the stage, along with Freddy polishing his microphone. They could both see Jeremy crossing the room and he tried not to make eye contact. The Toys were alright, but without Mike around to back him up...he didn’t feel all that safe with the original models. Freddy was almost as scary as Oswald. He left the main area as fast as he could and continued his search.

Jeremy went through several more arcade rooms before looping back around to the main stage again, all without any sign of Mike. He quickly crossed the floor again, keeping his face and eyes straight forward; he could still feel their eyes boring into the back of his head. He went through the room and into the next hall, ceaselessly searching for Mike. But alas, he couldn’t find any evidence of him. It forced him to come back to the main stage area again, and he stopped in the middle of the room, glancing around.

Freddy and Bonnie, on seeing Jeremy enter their domain for the third time in rapid succession, both looked up from what they were doing and kept a steady eye on him. Jeremy tried to ignore them and kept searching for Mike. He looked under a couple of the tables, into the dark corners, even up in the metal rafters, but he wasn’t anywhere. Jeremy bit his lip. He didn’t want to, but…

“Um…”

Both Freddy and Bonnie were now at full attention and staring right at Jeremy. “I, uh…” he stuttered, trying to keep himself from looking at the floor, “...I don’t wanna...well, I just need, um…”

Bonnie raised his eyebrow and huffed, “What’cha want?”

Jeremy stuttered even more, but eventually he choked out, “M...Mike…?”

It took a couple minutes, but Freddy got it and pointed to the entrance doors. “Saw’im go into those doors ‘bout an hour back,” he deadpanned.

Jeremy was still frozen with dread for a moment before he nodded and mouthed “Thanks” before turning tail and running to the entrance doors without looking back. He pushed them open to find the entrance room dark, though the displays of toys and merchandise on the two desks on both sides of the room were still up. And in the upper-left corner stood Mike, his back to the door, staring at the corner of the wall. If he heard Jeremy come in, he sure didn’t acknowledge it. Jeremy cleared his throat. “Hey, Mike.”

In response, he saw Mike swivel his upper torso slightly to look at him, and then went back to staring at the wall. From what Jeremy saw, he didn’t look the least bit sad, angry, or happy. “Hey, JF,” he replied with a neutral voice.

“...You okay?” Jeremy asked, his voice quivering slightly.

Mike sighed deeply and leaned back, his head rolling up. “I’m booooooooored,” he groaned.

Jeremy couldn’t help but chuckle as he walked over to Mike. “So y’all jus’...watching paint dry?”

“What’s it look like I’m doin’?” Mike shot back.

Jeremy actually laughed out loud and stopped himself when he saw Mike glaring at him. “Figured y’all weren’t having an easy time here.”

“I mean, for God’s sakes, they shut off all the arcade machines’n shit when they close the building,” Mike huffed, running a hand through his hair. “No fuckin’ fun allowed, I guess.”

“...Ya could go talk t’someone.”

Mike only shook his head. “Hell no. I _hate_ talkin’ to people.” He paused and glanced at Jeremy. “And you can be damn sure I won’t talk to the animatr...the perform...the whatever-the-fuck they’re supposed to be called now,” he finished.

Jeremy squinted at Mike and replied, “What about Foxy? Thought I heard you talkin’ to him a couple nights ago.”

“...That’s ‘cause he’s a cool motherfucker,” Mike brushed him off. “Everyone else is scary as fuck.”

“Maybe we could play a game with’em,” Jeremy suggested. “Might help ya get used to’em.”

Mike nearly choked and quickly turned it into scoffing. “Fuck all that. The only one of’em I trust _not_ to tear my face off is Foxy, like I said. And honestly, even _that’s_ not a complete package.”

* * *

“A game, hm?”

“Yeah,” Jeremy said. “There any old ones in...I’unno, a back room or somethin’?”

Toy Freddy scratched his chin. “...I haven’t the slightest idea,” he said.

While Jeremy conversed with Toy Freddy, Mike had to explain what was going on to the original four, on the other side of the Toyland area, behind the main show stage and in the back of the restaurant. They seemed...mildly interested in the prospect...save Bonnie. “Is he really gonna force us ta play some stupid game?” he asked.

Mike sighed and rubbed his forehead. _“Trust_ me, cottontail, I like this idea as much as you do, but once Jeremy sets his mind to forcing other people into doing some stupid shit, that stupid shit gets done.”

“I can hear ya, ya know!”

“But yeah,” Mike continued, “So Jiffy wants us to play a board game together.” He cleared his throat and muttered, “A surefire way to get eviscerated, if ya ask me,” under his breath. He looked around at the whole group and saw everyone, aside from Bonnie glance at each other and actually nod. He could’ve sworn he even saw Foxy grin a little.

“Personally, I think that’s a great idea,” Chica said. “Haven’t played a real board game in years.”

Mike’s jaw went slack for a moment. “How the hell are you fucks not dead from boredom yet?”

 **“No** swearin’ Mike,” Freddy chided. Mike only rolled his eyes.

On the other side of the room, however, Jeremy had continued talking with Toy Freddy, and managed to pull Toy Bonnie into the conversation after he overheard the word “game.”

“‘Games?’ Nobody told me we were gonna play a game, now,” he interrupted after walking in from a separate room. Toy Freddy and Jeremy looked over at him and made room for him in their little “circle” when he scuttled over. “Thought they shut off all the arcade cabinets, though.”

“Because we were not intending to play an overly-complex and fruitless distraction of lights and sounds in the arcade cabinets,” Toy Freddy explained, adjusting his monocle. “Jeremy simply intends us to play a board game.”

Toy Bonnie’s eyes widened and he flashed his giddy grin. “Well, shoot, why didn’t you say so! Room for one more?”

“A‘course!” Jeremy exclaimed. “...Now we just need somethin’ t’play…”

“I heard Cherry sayin’ she saw some games turned in to the lost and found box, but...I can’t imagine they’re still there,” Toy Bonnie said.

“Hmm…” Jeremy instinctively scratched his chin and gazed up at the ceiling, lost in thought. “Is there...anything in a storeroom or the basement?”

Toy Bonnie shook his head, still sporting a smile. “Silly, silly, silly...they wouldn’t store anything not merchandise-and-supplies-related in a storeroom!” Toy Bonnie paused for a moment and then added, “And the basement...well, none of us really know about the basement. ‘S weird down there.”

Jeremy chuckled. “Mike’d agree with that, I bet,” he said.

Toy Bonnie and Toy Freddy glanced at each other and didn’t seem to share Jeremy’s good attitude. “No, seriously,” Toy Bonnie continued, “there’s somethin’ wrong down there, not just ‘cause of...y’know, the bear, but Billy went down there once, one night.”

Jeremy frowned. _Why would Balloon Boy go down there?_ As if to answer his own question, Toy Freddy spoke up, “We don’t know why he did. He said himself he found the door open and got curious…”

There was a long pause and then Toy Bonnie concluded, “We didn’t see him for a _week.”_ Jeremy’s eyes widened. “Neither us or the day employees. And when he _did_ turn up, we found him back where he usually stands during the day...and he said he was only gone for a day. He said Malcolm told him that, and you know we’re usually inclined to listen to him.”

Jeremy was about to inquire more into the mysterious nature of the basement when he and everyone else heard loud, rusty clanking and old joints turning. They all stared into one of the halls that led to all the storage closets and the basement door in the back. Standing in said entryway was the hulking form of Fredbear himself. The only thing visible from the darkness were his burning yellow eyes, and at about the time Jeremy and the others recognized him, he heard someone scream, followed by a loud _*thud*._ He didn’t have to turn around to know what Mike must have looked like right now.

Fredbear only stood still, glancing around for a moment. Jeremy thought he almost looked shy, but eventually, he held up his right hand. Clutched in his grip was a box that looked like it contained...a board game.

Nobody dared move, especially not Mike...which left Jeremy to slowly inch his way forward. Fredbear quickly noticed and tracked him with his pinprick eyes. Eventually, after what felt like an eternity, Jeremy was a couple feet away from the animatronic and could see what the box he was holding clearly: a faded, but ultimately intact, boxed set for Monopoly, dated nineteen eighty-six. Jeremy glanced up at Fredbear, whom he could more clearly see now, despite the dark.

The bear nodded and held out the box. Jeremy looked from it and back for a solid two minutes before slowly reaching out to take it. Fredbear let go, and then trudged off into the recesses of darkness. Jeremy watched him leave, then turned back to everyone gathered.

“Guess we’re playin’ Monopoly,” Jeremy said with a shrug.

Everyone paused for a moment, but Mike eventually scoffed and made his way over to a circular booth. “Perfect,” he said, “guess that means at least _one_ of us is leavin’ here in a body bag.” He stretched his arms before settling back down and leaned both elbows on the table, and a malicious grin crossed his face. “...And it sure as hell ain’t gonna be me.”

After a bit of explaining, planning, and dirty looks aimed at Mike, everything started. All players chose their pieces, and Foxy elected to spectate, as there weren’t enough playing pieces to go around. He had also stated playing simple board games weren’t “somethin’ made fer a sea dog.” So everyone took their places around the table, and opened everything up. The board was scratched in some places, the cards and paint was faded, the money was worn, but it could be played. Mike noted that with so many players, the game would at least go quickly.

Four rounds passed, and almost half the properties had been taken by either rolling doubles or lucky Chance cards. And as it so happened, Toy Bonnie managed to land on Ventnor Avenue, currently owned by Freddy. With three houses on it.

Toy Bonnie started biting his nails as he looked at the board, his properties, and where he landed. He’d spent so much gaining other properties that it left him sorely drained in the fiscal department. Toy Bonnie pursed his lips and glanced up at Freddy who was leaning his elbow on the table and staring at him; for once in his life, he seemed to be smiling. Granted, it wasn’t a big smile, rather subdued at that, but it not only managed to make him look smug but also...quite intimidating. At least to Mike.

Either way, Toy Bonnie sighed and laid his properties out in front of him. “Well, I’m broke,” he said.

Mike pursed his lips and shook his head. “And there’s the first casualty of war, ladies and gentlemen.”

Toy Bonnie handed over the rest of his properties and money to Freddy, who graciously took them and quickly arranged the four new deeds he had in alphabetical order. After staring at them for some time, he tilted his his head and looked up. “Anyone wanna trade?”

“I’ll take Virginia Avenue,” Chica said, raising her hand. “I’ll bid...one hundred and twenty.”

Freddy paused and shook his head with a wry smile. “Gonna have to do better’n that, sweetums.”

“...One-twenty and a kiss?” she continued, batting her eyelashes.

Freddy sighed and tipped his top hat over his eyes after most everyone else at the table started snickering. “I’ll settle for one twenty an’ Baltic.”

Chica kept smiling as she handed over one-twenty Monopoly-money and the deed, which Freddy took. “Thanks, boo.”

“Vi’ginia Avenue sucks,” Bonnie casually remarked.

“Well, at least it ain’t St. Charles’ Place,” Toy Bonnie replied, leaning back into his seat. “Nobody lands there.”

“Mike?” Mike glanced over at Jeremy, who handed him the dice. “Your turn.”

Mike huffed and sat up as he grabbed the dice from Jeremy’s hand. He shook them for two seconds before near dropping them on the board. He rolled a four. From where he was, that put him on St. Charles’ Place. After staring at the board for a second, he looked up, a wry smile on his lips. “You spoke of the Devil, and here I am.”

* * *

“I sweah ta Gawd, if ya keep eyein’ my stuff like dat, I’ll personally tear ya head off!”

“Watch it, Bugs Bunny, I’ll open a can of whoop-ass on you _and_ top hat over there if you start comin’ at me with dumb offers.”

“Both’a you should either calm down, ‘r just give up an’ let me win. Can’t trust either’a you to keep this clean, can I?”

After seven more rounds, everyone had managed to go bankrupt, save for Mike, Bonnie, and Freddy. All three of them had at least one monopoly, Mike’s on the yellow tiles, Bonnie on green and pink, and Freddy had just about everything else. From there, the turns were dragging on as it usually involved a lot of yelling between the three of them. Toy Freddy groaned and put his head in his hands. “It’s going to be such a long night…”

“Look, pal,” Mike began, “all I’m sayin’ is that _I_ should get Boardwalk! Never mind the fact it’s good property to have, I need somewhere to rest without payin’ out my ass for rent!”

Freddy spluttered and waved his finger. “Oh, no, no, no, no, sonny-boy,” he replied almost mockingly, “Ain’t nothin’ you got on offer could make me give this monopoly up.”

“Fine, fine, fine,” Mike continued, “Bargain time? Bargain time…”

“Screw you an’ yer ‘bargains!’” Bonnie yelled across the table, “Last time you said dat? Ya gave Chica Illinois, Sain’ James, an’ a hundred bucks. Not even _close_ ta fair.”

“That was _absolutely_ fair!” Mike cried. “Chica just...didn’t _utilize_ everything properly is all!”

“Heard that pause there, mister,” Toy Bonnie pointed out.

Mike spun his head around and pointed at him with an added, “Shut it, candy-ass.”

Freddy groaned and covered his face with his hand, slumping forward with his elbows on the table. He was beginning to remember why _he_ didn’t play competitive games in the first place...in the loosest sense of the word. And then he heard Bonnie pipe up from the other side of the table. “Hey, boss…”

He looked up and out from in between his fingers. Bonnie didn’t look particularly happy, or sad. Tired, yes, but otherwise, he couldn’t pin what was going through his head. Bonnie held up two of his deeds. North Carolina and Pacific Avenue. “Trade’ja fer Boardwalk?”

Mike’s face went white and he began looking back and forth between them in a panic. Freddy, on the other hand, didn’t recognize the panic in Mike’s face and stopped. He leaned back in his chair and began to scratch his chin. He furrowed his brow after a minute and leaned back in and said, “For…?”

“You _can’t_ be serious,” Mike fumed. “You’re _shitting_ me, right?”

“Eh...I’mma need five-hundred ta make sure I don’t _choke_ ‘fore I hit Chance,” he said, pointing at the Chance space next to Kentucky Avenue.

Mike slammed his palms on the table and shouted, “Don’t do it, Freddy! He’s playin’ you! You’re taking a shitty deal and _letting_ this overgrown magician’s pet get away with it...!”

“Mmm…” Freddy hummed and drummed his fingers on the table before adding, “Throw in th’ Water Works and you got a deal.”

The silence remained tense as Bonnie thought it over, but he eventually grabbed the deed to the Water Works and five-hundred dollars and placed them on the table. The two of them traded, and Bonnie leafed through the bills. Eventually, Freddy grabbed the die and put them in front of Mike. “G’head an’ roll, sonny,” he said.

Silence. Freddy peered up from under his top hat. “Mike…?”

“God is dead,” Mike stated dryly as he stared dead ahead and unblinking. “God is dead and he never loved us in the first place. I’m done.” Before anyone could ask what he meant, Mike had stood up and tossed his hotrod mini off the board.

This, understandably, made Jeremy sneer. “Mike, the hell you doin’, man?”

“I’m basically dead, Mister J,” Mike called back, “My ass was stuck between North Carolina and Boardwalk with two-hundred an’ twenty-six to my name.”

Jeremy only stared after him, but eventually sidled himself out from behind the booth they were in with a few whispered “‘Scuse me”s, and he jogged after Mike. He caught up and passed Mike before jerking his head to the side, indicating he wanted to talk in the adjacent hallway. Mike saw this and rolled his eyes dismissively, but followed all the same. Once they stopped walking, Jeremy turned to face Mike and hissed, “Ya kiddin’ me, Mike?”

“Jerry, I would’a lost no matter what!” Mike replied.

“So y’all gotta be a downer and ruin everyone else’s night ‘casue ya ain’t got a good hand?” Jeremy replied, crossing his arms.

They both heard Bonnie yell something at Freddy. What it was about was hard to tell, with from what they could tell, Chica and Toy Freddy trying to diffuse the situation. Mike turned his head behind him and scoffed. “Sounds like they don’t need _my_ help, lol.”

“Christ, Mike,” Jeremy said as he facepalmed, “Y’all need t’lighten up. Enjoy yourself. Chances are it ain’t gonna last anyway.”

“Who told you that, the mime-in-a-box?” Mike replied with a smirk.

Jeremy was silent for a minute before he shook his head and said, “Listen, just stop bein’ so angry for like, five minutes, okay?” He walked away and back to the game, and Mike heard him calling to try and help calm everyone down and catch up on what happened. He scoffed and shook his head. Monopoly _was_ a ruthless endeavor at the end of the day.

Still, the sting of defeat was pretty fresh and it didn’t help Mike feel any less bitter. He paused for a moment and figured there was _one_ avenue he could take. Using his instincts, he walked to the back of the restaurant until he found the basement door. He paused at the entrance for a minute before he took a look around, leaned in close to it, and whispered, “This is technically _your_ fault too, you stupid c–”

The door suddenly came ajar, and standing in the blackness, there was a vague outline with two bloodshot eyes at least three feet above Mike and glaring down at him. Mike himself jumped back and stammered, “Oh Jesus, oh fuckin’ _fuck…”_ before he skidded on the smooth tile floor and ran. He didn’t turn around, even when he heard the door slam a few dozen feet behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: While I try to figure my shit out for Overdrive, have this instead ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	7. A Prelude to the Misfortunate Pasts of Several Individuals

As Jeremy finished wiping down the counter, he heard the TV droning on behind him. He usually left it on to concentrate as he did other work; it provided a pleasant white noise, like his music. Of course, the daily events eventually shifted gears. “In a more recent development,” the anchor said, “two more victims of Sudney’s ‘Phantom Killer’ have been found.” Jeremy paused to look at the TV. The picture only remained on the reporter, standing outside an apartment somewhere in the midtown, surrounded by police tape. “Two students of Purple Mountain Elementary were suffocated to death in their sleep. Declan Frazier and Sarai Ortega, ages twelve and nine respectively, were, according to police detectives, visited by the murderer during the night.”

Jeremy stopped his work, shook his head and sighed. “Declan showed signs of being strangled to death,” the reporter continued, “Sarai’s bed was coated in blood. Her body wasn’t found on the premises, nor anywhere nearby.”

Without another word, Jeremy turned off the TV. Just in time to see Mike wander in, wearing his grey tank top and dressed in his briefs. He took one look at Mike and muttered, “Mike, get some pants on, for cryin’ out loud.”

_“Urgh.”_ He kept grumbling as he grabbed some stale cereal and shoved a couple handfuls into his mouth. Mike sat at the table and chewed for a minute, with Jeremy steadily looking at him. He’d known Mike for seven years at least, but every day since they’d moved in to share an apartment, Jeremy found himself asking how one man cloud like Mike did. Granted, he wasn’t much better off, but at least he had some sense of dignity left. “Hey…” Jeremy looked back up Mike, who now seemed more awake and alert. As awake and alert as a tall, skinny, ghost-white shell of a man could be. “What time is it?”

Jeremy rolled his eyes and pulled out his phone to check. “Almost five p.m.”

Mike nearly spat out his frosted flakes and scrambled back to his room as he stuttered, “Shit!” over and over.

* * *

The drive back over was mostly spent in silence as Jeremy concentrated on driving and Mike kept daydreaming about being anywhere but _Freddy’s._ For what felt like the millionth time in a row, even though it had technically only been at least five days, they pulled into the employee’s parking spot and walked in.

Everything remained much the same as the last few days, except the curtains on the main stage were drawn and everything was silent up there. Jeremy was about to suggest they punch in before he noticed someone mulling around near the kitchen. Dressed in the same tacky brown and puke-green suit was Oswald, accompanied by Shannon, who walked out of the kitchen a second later. And as it so happened, Oswald turned around and saw the two of them walking through the dining area, and his gaze immediately hardened and he stomped over to them. Jeremy froze up when he saw the man come closer, cigar in his mouth glowing as he fumed, “You’re late. **Both** of you.”

“You say it like we’re not aware of that fact,” Mike replied. He looked back at Jeremy, who was looking down at his shoes, his security cap pulled over his forehead. Mike sighed and continued, “Look, man, it’s like, five-oh-two. We’re _two_ minutes late.”

Oswald took a drag of his cigar. “Time is money. Yours, but more importantly, mine, so don’t waste it.”

“Understood,” Mike said. Oswald nodded and flicked some ash out of the cigar before walking away. “...Ya thick-skulled, lard-chuggin’, bent-as-a-bob gaffer,” Mike added under his breath as he passed by.

“What was that, Schmidt?” Oswald hissed as he turned to face him.

“I was askin’ Jeremy if he wanted to ‘go chug some soda after’ we got off of work,” he replied without skipping a beat.

Oswald continued to stare at Mike and Jeremy for a second before he shrugged and walked away. Mike nodded and nudged Jeremy, gesturing at Oswald’s retreating form with his head. With that done, he headed for the kitchen himself, and as he passed Shannon, he leaned over and whispered, “Eat the rich,” into her ear.

Shannon instinctively pushed him away and watched him go, which Mike didn’t seem to mind. Both she and Jeremy remained silent for a moment before Shannon cleared her throat and said, “Well...welcome back, Mister Fitzgerald. You should probably clock in before the system automatically docks your pay for being late.”

“...Yeah,” Jeremy muttered as he left for the upstairs offices.

* * *

The old Chevy was parked and humming away in the night, hidden in an alley and being watched over by two thugs dressed in full green sweaters and tossle caps. On their persons were objects of reverence; gold-plated chains, ice-cube rings, the newest pairs of sneakers. Ironic, for youths who had taken to rebelling against order and religion. Still, they stood in silence, staring out of the alley and waiting for anyone too nosy for their own good. Francisco, however, was perched on the trunk of the car, both hands clasped and resting on his right knee; he had brought up his leg and was leaning on it, staring ahead in a trance-like state. Not moving, barely blinking...only thinking. “Hey, boss?” Francisco snapped out of his thoughts and glared over his shoulder at one of his guards, who was only looking at him with a stoic expression. “You want some chips’r somethin’? Think there’s a few left in the glove c’partment if you want any…”

“Did I _ask_ for anything?” Francisco snapped. “No. When I _want_ something, Llyod, I’ll _tell_ you. Now shut the fuck up; I’m trying to think.”

“Sorry, boss.” Lloyd turned back around and resumed his post. After a second, he leaned over to his friend and sneered. “Self-entitled asshole,” he muttered quietly.

Francisco, of course, could hear every part of that. His senses were sharper than they ever had been in years. He jerked his head up and the skin around his eyes blackened and discolored into a sickly dark purple. The mask with the lightning bolt design. He turned and spoke, and while recognizable, his voice had become far more coarse, and seemed to be teetering precariously on the bridge of using a foreign accent. _“Did you sa̷y̶ something a̵b̡o̢u҉t m̸̝̣͚͞ͅe̤̹̫̹͇, Lloyd?”_

Lloyd straightened up as his spine chilled and his hair stood on end. “N-n-no, sir, Cisco, sir!”

His eyes narrowed, but he huffed and his skin returned to normal. Francisco had been thinking to himself for the whole car ride over to meet the rest of the gang. They were parked several blocks away from _Freddy Fazbear’s,_ and would be looking to him to lead them in. And he, of course, was meditating on the whole situation. It would have been hard for a normal person, but it helped that he had his mentor guiding him by thoughts alone. Francisco remained silent for a moment, contemplating what he was doing, and as was the case most of the time, the Old Man noticed. _You’re doubting yourself._

“Sorry,” Francisco replied. He still forgot that the Old Man could read his thoughts. He _was_ sharing a body, after all. “...Just tryin’ to figure out what to do if I find-”

_The suit? It’s hidden behind a fake wall,_ he finished. _You’ll find it._

“Sir, how the _hell_ am I gonna find a fake wall?”

The Old Man made a long, drawn-out sigh. _What do you think? You knock on them. If it sounds hollow...break it down!_

“Yes, sir,” Francisco muttered. He got up and stretched his back and cracked it, then walked back around to the front of the car. “Lloyd, turn the car off,” he ordered, “Soren, you come with me. It’s time.” The two others gave him a quick affirmative, and Francisco stomped off up the street with Soren behind him. Normally, the leader’s bodyguard goes first; Francisco obviously didn’t need it, unless maybe Hellboy showed up for some godforsaken reason.

He could hear and smell the rest of The Toxins before he could see them; they walked a block northwest, into a more tightly-knit neighborhood, as it was closer to the marina district of Sudney; it had been artificially laid out like the hills of the Hollywood area years ago. He and Soren trudged up about one hill until they came to a large, vacant lot, filled with members of the gang, as well as two other vans The Toxins used for transport. How they had _acquired_ said vehicles was dubious, but that was between them and the police, and not him; he could travel wherever he damn well pleased without a car.

He stood before the gathered crowd who were laughing, smoking, and drinking. Francisco walked up to a group who had excess beer bottles lying around, picked one up, and smashed it against the door of the nearby car as he made his declaration. “Do I have your attention? You fuckwits?”

The silence and eyes on him denoted he did. He surveyed this sorry lot. He had a rudimentary plan cooked up in his head, which was to spread his forces out in the pizzeria and push everyone into the center. After that, it was essentially a crapshoot, but it was the best thing he had, and with any luck, he’d at least be able to run and fight another day. “Ladies and gentlemen…” he began, “I’ve got you all here together for a little raid-”

He hadn’t even finished when he heard some whooping, mainly from the younger members who, of course, had no clue where they were going. Francisco aimed his index and middle fingers into the sky like a gun and shot a violet laser out of them. The rabble-rousers exclaimed and covered their heads. “Shut the fuck up, I’m talking!” Francisco yelled at them. Once they settled down, he continued, “...Chrissake. As I was saying, we’re going on a raid. We’re going to that pizza place way down the road. You know what it is.”

“Boss?” Francisco looked over at a member who had walked forward with his hand raised. “Can you tell me just... _why_ we’re goin’ into that hellhole?”

“Yeah, I heard it was _haunted!”_ a girl exclaimed as she raised her hands up and wiggled her fingers to emphasize that it was “spooky.” This was met with laughter across all members. Francisco, however, stood statue-still, with his arms behind his back. As the laughter died, he began to chuckle grimly.

This, of course, was met with confusion, as another member of the Toxins craned his head and muttered, “Uh...boss…?”

Francisco brought his head back up and stopped laughing. “Sorry, sorry...it’s just funny because it’s true,” he remarked. There was murmuring and shuffling of feet among their ranks. “A’course, if anyone’s got second thoughts about this operation, please, rest easy. You’re more than welcome to run off with whatever you find. Money or otherwise. I don’t need it. If you’re _still_ on the fence…” The darkened violet mask crossed his eyes and his grin became unnaturally elongated, almost stretching back to his ears again. “Well, ya better take it up with me _now.”_

Dead silence. Francisco looked around. “No takers?” The light died down and the mask disappeared. His smile returned to normal. “Good. Now follow me. No noise. If anyone sees us, leave’em to me.”

* * *

“Mike!” Jeremy scanned the dark party room. No movement. He sighed and ducked back out and kept calling “Mike…!” as he walked the halls.

Jeremy kept walking around and calling until he heard Mike’s voice from around a corner reply, _“What?”_

“Mike, get over here, got a question!”

There was silence, but Jeremy remained on his course, and as he passed a connecting hallway, Mike walked out to join him. His hair was just as disheveled as ever and his eyes had bags growing under them by now. Mike walked with long strides and his hands stuffed in his pockets. “Where you been, man?”

Mike scoffed and blew hair out of his eyes. “Bonnie was givin’ me shit for the game last night,” Mike explained, “so I ditched his ass.”

Jeremy regretted asking. “Christ, Mike,” he muttered. Mike shrugged and pivoted to walk away, but Jeremy stopped him. “Hey, where ya goin’?”

“You asked me your question!” Mike replied.

That only made Jeremy scowl and cross his arms. “Don’t be a smartass, Mike.”

“Fiiiine,” Mike sighed as he turned around. “What is it?”

Jeremy paused for a second and asked, “You gotten anywhere with your...powers?” Mike remained silent and pursed his lips, which made Jeremy shoot a sideways look at him. That wasn’t good.

“No,” was Mike’s curt response.

Jeremy remained quiet, but eventually showed off the fruits of his labor himself, partly as a hopeful demonstration to show Mike it wasn’t that hard. A white mass of energy began to swirl around the palm of his open hand, congealing into a solid form in seconds. The form of a handgun; no make or model, something a bit more generic, something of his own design. Jeremy was aware he was probably enforcing all the worst stereotypes by using a gun, but he made sure all the projectiles he fired from it would cause nonlethal damage. The exacts escaped him, but he figured it wasn’t his part to think about it. “Can’t be that hard, can it?”

Mike scoffed after a minute. “Nah, man, they don’t work,” he said.

“You sure you just ain’t trying hard enough?” Jeremy asked, snatching the gun out on the air where it had been floating.

“Dude…” Mike began, “I’ve tried.” He smiled desperately and scoffed again. “I’ve tried to do the shit you’ve been telling me you can do and…” He chuckled bitterly and continued, “It doesn’t _work,_ dude. It doesn’t fucking _work.”_

Jeremy frowned. “Ya serious?”

“Dead fucking serious. Most I’ve found I can do is run for a longer time without my body telling me it wants to die,” Mike said as he cast his gaze upward. “That and I found out I can jump at least five feet in the air...But other than that, I tell you, Jeremy, it doesn’t fucking-oh, shit bubblegum.”

Mike stopped abruptly when they came to a gumball machine that looked like it had been dragged through a dumpster at a carnival, covered with plastic candies to make the machine sucker in a bunch of little kids to spend quarters (usually given out begrudgingly from parents). Mike himself dug into his pocket, found his wallet, and fished out fifty cents before putting it in the machine; he even gave Jeremy the “one second” sign as he turned the crank.

But this was _Freddy’s._ After the third turn, the gear mysteriously stopped working and jammed. Mike tried to budge it, and then groaned. “Come the fuck on…” Since the crank wouldn’t move, he tried shaking it. Then kicking it. Then, Mike finally started to punch the thing repeatedly, and judging by the harsh banging sounds reverberating throughout the hall, he wasn’t being gentle. It worked out, to Jeremy’s surprise, though, when two balls of gum rolled down the chute; Mike snatched them up and popped one into his mouth.

It didn’t take Jeremy long to notice Mike’s hand was red and bruised from the beating he gave the machine. “...Y’all okay, Mike?” he asked tentatively.

“Ain’t no stupid-ass machine gonna keep me from my gum,” Mike replied with a full mouth.

* * *

They were an army of at least seventy. Was it overkill? Francisco had been asking himself that question as he led The Toxins across the parking lot. His conclusion was “no.” If anything, this might be undercutting his efforts slightly. In time, he made it to the front doors before the rest of his goons, and stood there, glaring into the dark entry hall. He was joined by the spearhead of the Toxins after a minute, and he turned to address them. “Listen,” he began, “I want the majority of you in there, with me, with your guns trained on _anything_ that moves.”

“Literally ‘anything that moves?’” one of the thugs a few rows back called.

“If it moves, that probably means it’s sentient,” Francisco explained. “If it’s sentient, it’ll want _you_ dead. Make sure you kill it first.” He paused a second and then said, “Or at the very least, injure it to the point that someone else can pull through where you fucked up.”

The Toxins were silent until someone dared speak up from the back. “Sounds...good, boss,” he called, “but the real question is...how the _fuck_ do we get in...?”

A grin slowly crept across Francisco’s face, and to turned back to the entrance. With but a thought and a fearless stride, he walked into the solid iron and glass door. Instead of colliding with it, the materials seemed to warp, unwrap itself, allowing him to pass harmlessly beyond the threshold, and into the darkness of the entryway. All who saw him were astonished; they knew Francisco had some sort of odd connection to powers beyond their understanding, but seeing a man casually walk through a solid object as if nothing was there...it hit some part of the uncanny valley none of them were even aware of.

He turned around and inspected the lock, from behind this time. It needed a key to unlock properly; he could certainly force it, there was no question about that, though. Hell, Francisco could tear the thing off its hinges if he wanted to, but that made noise. _Loud_ noise. He wanted to avoid loud noise as much as possible until he could get into a favorable position, but seeing as how all he had to work with was the front and back door, and both were no doubt locked tight…

“Hmm…” he muttered to himself, “Probably should’ve seen this coming...Fuck it, we’ll improvise.” With that said, he grabbed the knob on the door and began to twist it. It caught, but Francisco kept his grip strong, and eventually, he heard a sharp, metallic _*crack!*_ and loud scraping. So he stopped, and forced the door open, gesturing for everyone to get inside.

As many of The Toxins piled into the entryway as they could, leaving about thirty-three people outside to watch the entrance.

* * *

After much silence in Pirate’s Cove, Foxy heard someone rummaging around on the ground floor, and naturally, he investigated. He found out pretty quickly that it was just Mike, and according to said security guard, he’d been looking for Foxy to help alleviate his boredom. Foxy suggested playing jacks; Mike said he had no idea how to play, and Foxy cackled and said he’d teach him. After a couple rounds, he even remarked Mike might actually be as skilled as a cabin boy in another fifteen years.

“Oh, ha, ha, you’re a _real_ card,” Mike remarked. His comment proceeded to make him fumble his next pickup, and he spilled all the jacks in his hand.

Foxy pursed his lips and shook his head. “Mm-mm. Real pirate’s gotta be able te multitask, lad. Ne’er know when yer ‘boutta need te steer a ship an’ fight off boarders at te same time.”

Mike huffed. “Easy for you to say,” he muttered to himself.

“Ah, jes’ keep goin’ lad. Ye’ll get it even’ch’lly,” Foxy said.

Mike went back to practicing, and Foxy bent down to the floor himself, which Mike took to mean that Foxy had gotten sick of watching him and wanted to play, too. His hunch was correct, and the two of them spent a few more minutes testing their speed and reflexes, until Foxy’s ears began twitching, and he quickly stood up to full height. Mike watched him, thinking nothing of it, and he asked, _“Now_ what...?”

Foxy said nothing. His ears kept twitching and he began sniffing the air, even going so far as to taking a few steps _away_ from Mike and toward the open center of the area of Pirate’s Cove they were in. “Foxy…?” Mike called again.

“...Swore I heard some’in’, lad,” Foxy said.

Upon hearing this revelation, Mike went completely silent too, straining his ears against the still air of the pizzeria. After awhile, he shook his head. “I don’t hear shit.”

“Sounded like metal,” Foxy muttered. He licked his lips and before Mike could ask anything else, he’d bolted right out from between the curtains of the Cove. Mike yelled some variation of “Where the fuck are you going?” and ran off after him, but thankfully, he didn’t need to go very far. Foxy was at the main stage in a hurry, leaping on top of it as fast he could with Mike right on his heels. WIth a flourish, Foxy threw the curtains open and yelled, “Cap’n! I think we got a proble-”

He cut himself off when he saw Freddy and Chica suddenly jolt backward from what he guess was a lover’s embrace before he happened to enter the scene. The other two nearly fell over, but managed to steady themselves, and while Chica looked slightly embarrassed, Freddy didn’t look all that happy...but then again, he rarely ever looked happy.

On Foxy and Mike’s part, Mike came in just late enough to miss Freddy and Chica’s reaction, but quickly picked up on the situation. He covered his mouth and coughed while taking a step back, mainly as a measure to keep himself from bursting into laughter; Foxy actually averted his gaze and put on an expression not unlike a dog being scolded by his owner. Freddy switched from glancing at Chica back to Foxy and eventually half-growled while almost out of breath, “...There a _reason_ yer bargin’ in on other people’s _beeswax…?”_

Despite how awkward he felt, something pirates never had to tussle with, Foxy breathed in and said, “I was, erm...sayin’ I think we got a problem, cap’n.”

“What **kind** of problem?”

“I think somebody be tryin’ te break in!” Foxy exclaimed.

Mike paused and quickly interjected, “Woah, woah, hold up, I was never given this information before, what the fu-”

“Da hell wazzat noise?” Bonnie called as he poked his head out from around a corner some ways behind everyone else.

_“Bonnie!”_ Freddy yelled back.

“What…?”

“C’mon,” Freddy said. He stood up almost immediately himself and walked over to Foxy and Mike. “We better group up with the others an’...” He trailed off before finishing, _“Get the show started.”_

Mike noticed his eyes revert to black with two bright blue rings acting as an iris and pupil. “Wait, seriously?” he asked as they all jumped off the stage, “No doubts? No questions asked?”

Freddy glared back at him and nodded at Foxy. “Those ears ain’t just for show, son,” he explained. “If Foxy hears some’m bad, chances are, bad things gonna happen.”

“Ex- _cuse_ me,” Bonnie interjected, “what’m I, chopped livah?”

Freddy snorted and grinned at him. “Yer reactions’re usually a bit late to warrant much praise. Shouldn’t be sleepin’ so much.”

Mike ignored the ribbing going on between the two jokers at the front; his lips curled into a disbelieving sneer and he looked at Foxy. Said fox was beaming with pride at being known for his accomplishments. He leaned down to Mike’s level and whispered, “Ye never seen us deal wi’ tresspassin’ blaggards b’fore, ‘ave ye, lad?” Mike quirked an eyebrow and shook his head, prompting Foxy’s smile to twist enough to look ever so slightly malicious. “Iff’n yer lucky, ye’ll see what I got waitin’ back in me ship fer the poor bloke who decided te try an’ blindside us.”

There was _just_ enough mystery in Foxy’s description for Mike to actually want to see what he was talking about, but that came later. He kept following Freddy and Chica into the back and into Toyland. Everything was dark. “Hey!” Freddy called, “Anyone still here?”

There was silence as everyone looked around, waiting on a response. But, eventually, there was one. After they all heard and turned toward the sound of scuffling from behind some plastic scenery, they all saw the pudgy form of Balloon Boy trot into better light. Mike had never talked to him much, since they were usually on separate ends of the pizzeria, but he was friends with Foxy, so that made him chill in Mike’s book. “Hey, boss!” Balloon Boy said as he walked forward and giving a small salute. “What’s crackin’?”

“Nothin’ good, I don’t think,” Freddy replied. “Foxy’s tellin’ me we might have unwelcome visitors comin’ in.”

Balloon Boy’s smile sank immediately. “...Oh, crap.”

Freddy scowled. “Ya might not be part’a my crew, but you _know_ I don’t wanna hear no swearin’ in here.”

“Oh, lighten up, top hat,” Mike huffed, “there’s no kids in here.” He paused a minute and added, hushed and under his breath, “Well, no _live_ ones, at least.”

He was pretty sure Freddy hadn’t heard that last comment, but he was still glaring at him. “Billy, do you know where everyone else is?” Chica asked to get them back on subject.

“Oh, yeah!” he exclaimed, “Red and Blue’re a few party rooms over, Amber’s in an arcade on the right side of this place and Cherry’s...um...I _think_ she’s still in Kid’s Corner? I mean, if she is, she hasn’t come out…”

“Where’s Jeremy?” Mike asked.

“With Red and Blue...I think,” Balloon Boy replied.

“I’ll brb.” Mike pivoted and raced away into an adjacent corridor, all the while calling for Jeremy, and Toy Freddy or Toy Bonnie when he felt like it.

Bonnie was gone in a flash as well, barreling toward the arcade and shouting, “Ambah, holy shit! Get out ‘ere! We got shit ta do!” Chica and Freddy, on the other hand, split up, with Freddy taking Billy with him to rally Toy Bonnie and Freddy to their places onstage and get Mike and Jeremy into a hiding spot and Chica running off to find Toy Foxy and hide her as well.

* * *

“How’s it look out there?”

“Nothin’ yet.” Jeremy turned off the walkie-talkie and went back to readjusting his grip. He was hanging at least twenty feet off the ground and looking down at Toy Freddy, Bonnie, and Chica, who had taken their place on their stage in Toyland. They were standing as still as statues, and Jeremy could barely even tell they were breathing. He himself was hanging from the ceiling by using that phantom thread he’d conjured up thanks to the Puppet’s supernatural meddling. For being so thin, the stuff was stronger than he gave it credit for. Mike was in the security office with both doors down and watching as much as he could. Balloon Boy and Toy Foxy were the only two of their number hiding; neither could deal with conflict very well, which was understandable.

Mike still had his 3DS with him, but he was starting to get incredibly bored, but didn’t want to miss whatever smackdown was going to hit whoever thought it was a bright idea to barge into _Freddy’s_ at almost one in the morning. So he kept his eyes on the cameras.

And then...some movement. Out of the corner of his eye, Mike saw a humanoid figure coming into the main area from an adjacent hall. He straightened up and turned on his walkie talkie. “Jeremy!” he rasped.

He heard some shuffling on the other side, and then Jeremy’s voice reply, “What…?”

“We got a live one.”

In time, more figures began filtering in. They were all clad in a bright shade of green, either on their shorts, hats, or shirts, usually one or more, rarely all three. Some had tattoos on their arms, and a couple had custom-made jackets with a skull with green wings, two knives stabbed into it diagonally from both sides. Many of them approached the main stage, pistols and handcannons drawn and pointed at the closed curtains. Others only had crowbars or broken bottles, which made Mike scoff to himself.

The lot of them spread out to look around, and then they converged on the stage. There were at least thirteen of them, one of whom whispered to his friend, _“Psst..._ Open those cur’ins.”

Without taking his eyes off them, the other responded, “I’unno how, bitch.”

“Well, for fuck’s sake, how we gonna know if anything’s back there?” another muttered.

As if on cue, the curtains for the main stage flew apart and the spotlights turned on, prompting every last one of the thugs to exclaim some form of curse and aim at the ones standing onstage. _“We-ell, hey there, boys an’ girls!”_ Freddy pivoted himself to look around at everyone, who instinctively kept their guns trained on him. _They_ all thought he was a robot. Mike didn’t know how Freddy could concentrate with a bunch of guns locked onto his head, but he still snickered to himself. _“Glad to see ya came back fer another fun day at Freddy’s!”_

_“I’ve got my signature pizza cooking right now,”_ Chica eloquated, _“it’ll be ready to eat just in time for our show!”_

One of the Toxins leaned over and whispered, “The fuck’s wrong with’em…?”

“I don’t fuckin’ know, you wanna fuckin’ ask?” she hissed back.

_“Well, alls I know is, I can’t work on an empty stomach. I’ll see ya later!”_ Bonnie exclaimed.

_“Bonnie, you can’t go anywhere yet!”_ Chica called to him from across the stage.

_“An’ why’s dat?”_

There was a pause as Freddy himself stared dead ahead and into the crowd. A smile seemed to form on his lips, from their perspective. _“‘Cause the show’s only gettin’ started.”_ The three of them froze in their places, but the lights and music continued to play, and everyone who watched relaxed... _slightly._

Before they could really get to muttering things in between themselves, someone began pushing through the crowd from the back. As heads turned, they all made way, and Francisco himself boldly approached the other three, going so far as to stand directly in front of stage center. He did nothing and said nothing. He only stared up at the actors in their places; the pawns on the chessboard. He looked from Chica over to Bonnie and back again in silence. Eventually, he nodded to himself. “Perfect.”

“Boss…?” Francisco turned around, toward the cronie that mentioned his title. “Whadda we do?”

Francisco shrugged and began making his way back through. “We ignore’em,” he said. “Not interested in whatever these things’re sellin’.”

“Didn’t you say these things were movin’, an’ we shouldn’ trust anythin’ that moves?” another one called.

He was silent for a minute. “...Guess I was mistaken.”

The stage lights behind him powered down, and everyone’s attention was drawn back to it. The stage was dark now, and after a moment, the curtains fell. Then, the overhead lights flickered, and went dead.

The Toxins all looked around with worry...all except Francisco, who smiled maliciously to himself. _“They didn’t recognize me,”_ he muttered to himself, _“and my proposed ‘ignorance’ was the trigger. As I expected.”_ There was dead silence hanging between the lights on the ceiling.

After a minute of this somber silence, a Toxin noticed Francisco staring into the darkness around them. He was counting something, silently, on his fingers. “Hey, boss?” he asked, “What’re ya doin’?”

“Three…”

Three fingers.

“Two…”

Two fingers.

Then down to one.

“...One.”

There suddenly came the sound of footsteps hammering the floor through the dark. Francisco spun around, toward the sound and ran directly toward it. In a second, he jumped and lashed out with his fist, catching something. Whoever it was yelled, and Francisco placed his voice immediately. After he had landed that blow, the building lights all came back to life, revealing Bonnie on the floor below him, clutching his nose with a small stream of blood coming out.

The rest of the Toxins, upon seeing an animatronic performer _completely_ out of place, yelled and staggered backward. Some brandished their guns and took aim. Francisco could sense it. He grabbed Bonnie by his collar and proceeded to throw him over his shoulder, just before two bullets struck the floor where he had been laying.

Francisco stood up to full height and glared at the rest of his gang, scowling. **“No,”** was his only command. A mere second after he finished that statement, he became acutely aware of someone sneaking up behind him, and he spun himself around just in time to block Chica’s overhead swing with his forearm. She had tried to cut into his head with the edge of the cupcake platter she carried onstage. It didn’t take long for him to throw her off him and cause her to stagger, opening her up to a series of three punches, the last of which sent her sprawling backward.

More footsteps coming from the west halls. Francisco looked over his shoulder to see a pair of yellow eyes rushing toward him, until the light revealed Foxy, holding a live, steel cutlass over his head, charging right at him. Francisco didn’t even bother to change his expression as he met Foxy’s downward swing, and he _caugh_ t the sword with his _bare hands._

Foxy’s expression barely had time to shift to shocked terror before Francisco rammed his elbow into Foxy’s gut, causing him to yelp and double over before Francisco plugged him right in the muzzle. Both he and his sword fell to the floor unceremoniously.

Francisco looked back at his goons and quickly ushered them to block the entrance of the pizzeria. The Toxins all got to crowding around the arch to the entry hall after tripping over each other a bit, effectively blocking it off. Francisco casually walked toward them as if he hadn’t even been attacked, and turned to face the rest of the room, and as luck would have it, he could see the blue rings of Freddy’s eyes approaching from the darkness.

Freddy himself had to readjust his plan after seeing Francisco thrash everyone else without so much as breaking a sweat. It was obvious the element of surprise was gone, so he opted to go for the “intimidation” approach, lumbering out of the darkness to face Francisco down on his own. Francisco...only grinned. _“Dear me,”_ Freddy said, _“seems we got somebody here who don’t follow the rules. Y’all know what we gotta do to people who don’t follow the rules...”_

“Cute,” Francisco interrupted, “now cut the shit. I know your secrets, so don’t pretend to be clever. You ain’t _._ ” Freddy straightened up slightly, shocked at his words, and his expression shifted to confusion.

One of The Toxins actually found the nerve to speakup from the crowd, whispering, _“Psst..._ Boss...Wh-what’s goin’ on…?”

“Shut up,” Francisco hissed, raising his left hand back toward all the thugs behind him. “Just keep your guns focused on the damn circus rejects. Let me fucking talk.” He heard more footsteps, and saw clones of the original four break the darkness that led to the back; the Toys. It was odd, however...he only counted three, not five, as he had originally anticipated. And on top of all that...there was someone else behind them. An actual human, dressed in uniform. At least he’d accounted for that. No doubt the sounds of him wiping the floor with everyone else teased them out of hiding. “So...finally taken notice, have you…?”

The Toys would have set about to getting Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy to their feet, but the multitude of guns trained on all of them helped dissuade that idea, leaving the three to slowly pull themselves up to their knees. Francisco took one look around before stepping forward. “Alright, let’s...let’s talk about this, hm?”

“Fuck makes ya think we’re jus’ gonna let ya _talk?”_

Everyone stared at Bonnie in disbelief, save for Francisco, who only kept his wry smile about him. “Because,” he stated plainly after he had let the silence linger, “I’d like to think you’re all...fairly _sensible_ individuals. Maybe listen to _why_ I’m here, and we can reach an agreement.”

Before he could continue, he heard some sort of metal sheet sliding up and slamming into something else, coming from behind the main stage, and a few seconds later, Mike ran out from the arch on the left side, pushing through the Toy animatronics and Jeremy. He stopped right in front of the rest of them, which actually gave Francisco pause. _“...Two_ of you,” he said. “Sorry, have we been introduced...? No, of course not. My name’s Francisco da Cruz, for future reference.”

Mike paused, as Francisco’s mannerisms were...unnaturally calm, to make an understatement. “...Well...That’s Jeremy,” he said pointing behind him. He could see, through his peripheral vision, that Jeremy was staying behind Toy Bonnie and obviously scared of Francisco, leaving him to do all the talking, as per usual. “...And I’m Mike. And _both_ of us are wondering just what the _fuck_ you’re doing in here, ‘cause we’re closed. So get the _fuck_ out.”

“Mike…?” Francisco repeated. “Short for ‘Michael,’ I’m guessing?”

Mike was silent, mainly because he was beginning to tink Francisco had an abnormally thick skull. “...Yes…?”

“Interesting,” Francisco mused.

“Whaddaya mean ‘interesting?’” Mike snapped back.

“Ah, nothin’,” Francisco replied, “I just think it’s strange how someone of your disposition would work here.”

Mike crossed his arms and smiled bitterly. “Well, I enjoy eating. It’s one of my _favorite_ survival habits.”

“...Fair enough.”

“Blimey!” Francisco’s gaze shot over to Foxy, still kneeling on the floor and glaring daggers at him. “If yer gonna do nothin’ but _stand_ around in ‘ere, ye’d be better off swabbin’ te deck’a yer own ship, far away from us! Whattaya want ‘ere? Out wi’ it...!”

“Oh, yeah. Right,” Francisco said. “Sorry ‘bout that. Ya distracted me.” Freddy, Bonnie, Foxy, and Toy Bonnie all glared at him, but he continued regardless. “I’ve come to collect what belongs to me. If you wouldn’t mind pointing me toward it, we can shake hands and carry on with the night like nothing ever happened.”

“Depends on what yer lookin’ for,” Freddy said, crossing his arms.

Francisco cracked a small smile. “Don’t know what it looks like exactly, but all I know is that it’s…” He stopped, and his smile got larger, spreading across his face. _“‘In reserve storage.’”_

Freddy’s eyes went wide, as did everyone else’s, save for Mike and Jeremy. They only exchanged nervous looks; neither liked how Francisco worded that phrase. **“No,”** Freddy said, “‘Specially not fer some young punk like you.”

Francisco’s manic grin quickly disappeared and his face suddenly looked a lot more stoic than before. Nothing changed necessarily, it was more of an... _atmospheric_ thing. “...I see…”

_“Psst...boss…!”_ one of the thugs whispered to him. _“What’s goin’ on here? What’re ya doin’ talkin’ ta these...freaks...?”_

Francisco didn’t even look behind him, only holding up his hand to signal for silence, and hissed, _“Can_ it, you retard,” for good measure. He assumed a thoughtful position, tenting his fingers and drumming them for a minute before he stared back up at Freddy. “Although, I’m not just some punk kid. You should know that,” he said.

“What are you hidin’...?”

In response, Francisco looked Freddy dead in the eyes. After a moment of tense, unknowing silence, a black sickness began to creep out of the corners of his eyes, weaving its way across his skin. Francisco didn’t even seem the least bit bothered as it took hold, turning the areas around his upper face into a purple, lightning-bolt mask of death. Those who saw it happen, Jeremy realized, were gripped with something: Foxy and Bonnie actually tried to stumble away from him and Chica made a couple hesitant steps to toward Freddy. Toy Freddy and Toy Bonnie were frozen in place, staring at Francisco with abject horror growing on their faces, and Toy Chica was staring at him as well, and shaking violently. And in that moment, Jeremy realized:

The very monsters roaming the halls of _Freddy’s_ were _terrified._

Francisco, meanwhile, seemed to be quite happy. _Sadistically_ happy. “You really _should_ be more open, y’know. Something like this is no way to tre͟a͢t ͘ **an҉ o͚l̶̮̘̦͕̪̺d̬̺̯̙** **_f̝̩͠r̵̘͉̥̘͟i̢̹̯̪̲͡e̴̛̗͚͇̝̱̠̕n̨̻̗͕̝͖͕̝̭̲d̜̜̟͈͍̹.”_ ** He lifted his right arm up, pointing a single finger at the whole group.

_“Fire.”_

His command was met with the sound of a thousand lead hailstones being launched at everything in sight. Of course, quite a few bullets missed, and in the confusion, the defenders managed to get behind suitable cover, usually just being an overturned table. Mike and Jeremy were stuck behind the corner of the wall of the Toyland area with Toy Freddy, Bonnie, and Chica. They _could,_ realistically, run as fast as possible and dive into the office...but that would mean leaving the others to die, and Jeremy wasn’t about to go out like that.

Francisco only stared ahead as bullets kept chewing through the makeshift defenses until he held up his hand to signal them to stop. “A’right, that’s enough,” he commanded, and the gunshots died down almost immediately. There were a couple of the punks who fired off a couple more rounds. “Keep the doorway blocked,” he continued, “while I get what I came for. If you want, a few of you can go ahead and take whatever you want from the registers. Or don’t. I don’t give a fuck.”

A couple of them scurried off into adjacent rooms before anything else could scare them out of it while Francisco simply strode ahead. His back arched and confident as he walked toward an overturned table, which Bonnie was hiding behind. He came out of it screeching like a demon, brandishing his guitar. Francisco ducked under the swing and came back up, uppercutting him in the jaw. Bonnie’s scream was abruptly cut off and he grunted as he did a backward somersault through the air before crashing into another table.

“Now that I think about it,” Francisco gloated, “you were the easiest to kill. I can’t remember, was it you or the girl who I got to first?” Bonnie never replied, because Francisco heard footsteps behind him, and he turned around to intercept Toy Chica almost kicking him in the chest. He caught her leg and held her in place, smiling maniacally. _“Really_ thought you’d get away with that, did’ja, bitch?” He tightened his grip and threw her over his head, and right into Bonnie, who at the time, had been trying to stagger to his feet. They both collided and got the wind knocked out of them as they tumbled over each other. “Absolutely pathetic,” Francisco spat as he dusted his palms off.

He turned around to see Freddy only a few feet away, and still approaching at a rapid pace. Francisco acted faster than instinct as he grabbed Freddy’s fist before it could connect with his forehead. Freddy himself had his eyes still glowing, and they locked stares. “You might _act_ like a killer,” Freddy grunted, “but I don’t much think ya could measure up to _him.”_

Despite being taller than Francisco by at least several inches, Francisco kept his smile wide. “Is that so?” he rasped. Francisco then allowed Freddy to win at pushing his fist closer, only to use the sudden momentum to tip him off balance and deliver a blow to the stomach. Freddy crumpled and didn’t even have time to recover the air that got knocked out of him before Francisco pushed him down onto his back and held him there. “Because I distinctly remember you hiding, _Gabriel.”_

Freddy’s breath caught in his throat. “Oh, yes,” Francisco continued, “you really did your damndest to hide in the dark, hoping I wouldn’t be able to see. Too bad it didn’t save you.”

“No…” Freddy tried to keep his breathing in check, but staring into Francisco’s dead eyes made it far too difficult. “You...how…? It can’t be…”

“You idiot.” His hands coiled around the sides of Freddy’s head, tightening, and pulling him closer, and then Freddy saw his eyes. There was something wrong with the irises; they were clouded purple, and a faint ring of vibrating green was circling around his pupils. Freddy felt his breath on his face, hot and baying for blood.

**_“...W͟e̛̛͞ ̵̶̕a̷̛͞ŗ̸̴͜͜e͘͘͟͡ ͢͡ǫ̡͟n͜e̸͢͟ ̛̕a͏͘͡ņ̶̢͘͘d̶̕͘͟ ̶̢͘͞t̴͢h̡͘̕͏̨e͘ ̧̛͞҉̕ş͡a͘҉͘͝m̷̢e̵̸̵͟.”_ **

There was hardly as pause when Francisco felt something wrap itself around his neck and fling up into the air, and he yelled all the way back down until he hit the floor, cracking the tile in a couple places and opening cuts on his arms. He wasn’t hurt, more caught by surprise than anything else, and he pushed himself to his feet. Now, standing between him and Freddy was the Puppet. It was still smiling, but Francisco felt like it looked...more angry than it showed. He didn’t have long to dwell on it though, as he felt his brain go numb and his vision tunneled.

_“You…”_ he hissed. Francisco began pacing in a circular motion, centered around the Puppet. _“You’re a cosmic mistake. There’s no way you should have carried on.”_

The Puppet only raised up its arms, palms open, and deadpanned, _“And yet...Here. We. Are.”_

More strands of ectoplasmic string shot out, streaking toward Francisco. He jumped back as the both of them snapped around, displacing the air and cracking like whips. The Puppet, however, kept its palms out, sending more phantom string his way. By now, Freddy had evacuated the area, keeping a close eye on all the thugs as he ran toward Chica and pulled her into one of the nearby party rooms.

The Puppet and Francisco, however, continued to duel, Francisco himself seemed to be motivated to utterly destroy his opponent, if his scowl and aggressive tactics were anything to go by. He would attempt to “drive-by” the Puppet, dashing past it faster than the eye could detect and throwing more violet balls of energy. The Puppet, however, seemed to be superior, if not equal, to Francisco in almost every respect, effortlessly dodging his volleys with swift jumping. Still, whatever was driving Francisco forward had relentless hatred fueling him, and wasn’t giving the Puppet any room for error. Jeremy could see it from his hiding spot, and as he watched them duel, he felt something welling up in his heart. Maybe it was courage; maybe compulsion. But either way, he took a deep breath in, and decided he needed to stop hiding.

“Jeremy!”

He looked back. Without realizing, he found he walked several steps forward, and Mike was staring at him pleadingly. “What the fuck you think you’re _doin’?”_  
  
Jeremy didn’t know how to answer that with so many things happening at once, because it made it hard to think. So he didn’t. “I think it’s time for me t’be done with hidin’.” Without another word, he dashed out of hiding and forced his guns to materialize in his hands before he fired a few volleys at Francisco, who was staring the Puppet down again. And the bullets hit their mark, causing Jeremy to grin.

Before he realized Francisco hadn’t even flinched. And then he went so far as to pause and glare at Jeremy, too. Jeremy gulped, twitched his eyes around, and then held his guns up shakily. “D-don’t...don’t make me do somethin’ my mama wouldn’t want me t’do…” he stuttered.

Francisco paused, just long enough to straighten himself up and glare at both the Puppet and Jeremy for a moment before he was gone in the blink of an eye.

And a split second later, Jeremy realized he was flying through the air a split-second before he felt crushing pain in his stomach. He flew backward and hit a wall, yelling in pain as he crumpled to the floor; he barely had any time to open his eyes and catch his breath before he felt Francisco grab his collar and pull him up to look directly in his eyes.

“Your mother won’t _want_ to look at your bloody, mangled face by the time I’m done with you,” he hissed. He threw Jeremy over his shoulder full-force, but before he could hit anything, Jeremy felt himself stop in midair abruptly, almost as if someone had caught him; and when he opened his eyes, he looked up to see the Puppet, carrying him gently in its arms. It even looked down to meet his gaze. Jeremy could have sworn the porcelain of its cheeks shifted upward to smile ever so slightly.

After another second, the Puppet set him back down on the tile, a few feet away from Francisco, who had, oddly enough, not opted to move or take _any_ action during that time. He only remained across the room, crossing his arms. When everything was still again, he scoffed and took a couple steps forward. “I’ve heard some stories ‘bout you,” Francisco mused, “...’Bout your bleedin’ heart.”

The Puppet met his empty stare with one of its own. _“That person...and myself...are two separate entities…One is the will...but I am the hand...”_ It paused, and the ghost-white lights in its eye-sockets lit up and began to burn like the hateful candles they were. _“But I hold...no such remorse...for you…”_

He rolled his neck, cracking it in several places, and he chuckled. _“Heh-heh._ Well, I certainly won’t be the first to die to you. God damn, what would ‘dad’ say if he knew the blood of good, honest, hard-working people was on your hands?”

Jeremy felt his stomach twist itself, and when he looked up at the Puppet, he guessed that was its doing directly. He felt a cold, hateful aura coming off it; something that was made more obvious when the Puppet lowered its head and sent more phantom string out.

But this time, there were dozens of them, all streaking toward Francisco like heat-seeking missiles. He scowled again and started dodging, only realizing after getting hit in the shoulder that he might be pushing his luck. Francisco jumped back, then bent backward, dodged several more blows, got hit twice more, and jumped forward while spinning around like a top.

Jeremy decided, against his better judgement and to to his own surprise, to rush in and he brought his two guns out and started firing at Francisco to give him something else to chew on.

“Oh, shi-”

He was silenced when he felt dozens of projectiles hitting him in the face, the ectoplasmic bullets dissipating when they made contact. Saying they stung was an understatement; like if lead bullets could be made nonlethal. He instinctively brought his arms up into an X-formation to block as many of the shots as he could before opening himself up and jumping directly toward Jeremy like a feral predator. Jeremy, because of the sudden movement, was caught by surprise and stopped firing; he only stared at Francisco lunging at him, before he was suddenly hit over and over by punches and kicks. There was a final blow delivered to his face that sent him toppling over and onto his back.

Through blurry vision, he looked up, at Francisco’s advancing form. The other man was brandishing a maroon light, blazing like a welding torch, from his finger. “What a nuisance. _You_ won’t be missed, that’s for damn sure.”

Jeremy tried to speak, but he was still too dizzy from the thorough beatdown Francisco had given him, and was now staring death in the eyes. Until he heard footsteps thundering toward them. Francisco heard them too.

“Don’t fucking touch him, you tequila-chuggin’, siesta-takin’, job-stealin’ taco jock-”

Francisco whipped himself around to see Mike charging up to him, about two swing overhanded with his right hand. He proceeded to slap Mike’s fist down and away from him, which gave him the perfect angle to kick with his left foot, catching Mike in the face and sending him flying. He flew backward several dozen feet, crashing into tables, knocking over chairs, and finally careening into the backstage area, accompanied by loud crashing and the sound of plaster being cracked and broken.

_“Mike...!”_

“Well, he’s dead,” Freddy muttered.

Francisco rubbed his bare knuckles and cracked a wicked grin. “Wow, what a retard…” he chuckled to himself. He turned back to look down at Jeremy. “Now...where was I…?”

He was quickly interrupted by Toy Bonnie bringing his guitar down on his head which resulted in an ear-splitting static brown note ringing throughout the central area. Francisco himself grunted and stumbled away from the blow, and then quickly looked back up at him. Toy Bonnie was still holding his guitar, and it now had some blood splattered on it; when Francisco glared at him, he froze for a second before quickly hiding the instrument behind his back and smiling as innocently as possible. Francisco wasn’t buying it, as expected. He growled, which quickly raised into a battle cry as he raised his fist up, crackling with violet energy.

He’d barely even taken a step forward, however, before there was a flash of gold from the backstage, followed by a hollow explosion that echoed with too much reverb to be natural as gouts of golden fire began pouring out from behind the curtains. Everyone close to the stage covered their faces from the sudden bright light and blast of heat. Amazingly, however, the fabric of the curtains never caught alight. Then, above the crackling of fire, there was a low sound that grew, and grew, until it had gone from a dull hum into a high-pitched scream. It continued for a minute before abruptly cutting itself off, creating another dull explosion that expelled most of the fire. And all was silent. Jeremy, like most of his friends, couldn’t help but keep their eyes transfixed on the darkness behind the curtains; Francisco was far more confused. “What’n the name of all that’s holy…?”

From the blackness shone two golden glowing lights that, when they came out of the dark, revealed themselves to be Mike’s eyes. Mike himself didn’t look any different, save for his entire body being wreathed in ethereal yellow flame.

And he looked a lot more angry than usual; he looked beyond livid.

Then the shaking started. Mike’s body began to convulse more and more violently as time went on, though it still only lasted about two minutes. As his arms and neck twitches around, he made another vocalization, a low moan punctuated by sharp, gurgling gasps of breath. That moan began to raise itself in pitch, eventually turning into another piercing, hysterical screech, and in another instant, Mike jerked himself forward and vanished into thin air.

Everyone, even The Toxins still guarding the front door, froze to let the stillness set in. It didn’t last long, because Mike reappeared, right in front of Francisco, and punched him before he had time to react, sending him flying across the room. Francisco crashed into several tables as he skidded backward, and finally came to rest at a wall near the rest of his gang. Before he even stopped moving, he heard the Old Man talking to him.

_Hmm...I hate to say it,_ the Old Man said, _but I think we’ve_ _underestimated ourselves._

“So…?” Francisco gasped quietly.

_So find the wall and find it quickly, my boy! Time isn’t on our side anymore!_

Francisco staggered up to his feet, batting away any and all attempts to help him from The Toxins who were brave enough to come to his side. “What the fuck’re ya waitin’ for, you worthless delinquents!?” he cursed. “Fucking **shoot** them...!”

The Toxins did as he instructed, turning to face the entire group. They were only stopped by another scream from Mike, and a second later, they all found out he’d dashed forward too fast for any of them to see, and by then, it was already too late. The only indicator they had to go by was a scream of agony that was abruptly cut short as Mike jabbed his fist into someone’s face, breaking and caving in his nose completely.

Everyone in the group was immediately thrown into disarray as Mike jerked himself around between them all, punching, kicking, biting, and throwing bodies around with wild abandon. He would disappear, too, seemingly at random, only to appear anywhere from five to ten seconds later to break some skulls. The way he moved made it seem like he wasn’t even in control of his own body; either way, it didn’t stop him from turning the gathering of thugs into a massacre. The screaming and gunfire was punctuated by the equally pleasant sounds of breaking bones, snapping necks, and people choking on their own blood as their throat was torn open.

Jeremy and everyone else was only watching in terrified awe, before Jeremy himself shook himself to get his senses back and charged forward. He could tell Mike was not going to stop until every last one of The Toxins was nothing more than a fine red paste on the floor. And the walls. And probably everywhere he didn’t have time to mention, too. He didn’t have much trouble getting to Mike at all, considering he’d completely broken up The Toxins’ formation, but getting through _to_ Mike, well...he had no idea how well that would go. He called out “Mike!” as he pulled out his two guns.

Mike didn’t seem to hear or care, going about with grabbing a mook and slamming his face into the tile floor. Repeatedly, until he didn’t even have any face left. Jeremy breathed in, and called out Mike’s name again after taking care of one of the more beaten-up thugs trying to come at him. No response. “Mike!” Jeremy called again.

Mike, to his surprise, _stopped_ pummeling some poor girl in the face to look at Jeremy. For two seconds, as he returned to beating the gang member beyond any reasonable sense of submission. “M-Mike…?” Jeremy stammered.

In response, Mike brought his hand up, which quickly lit itself on fire, and he jolted toward Jeremy. Jeremy cursed and ducked down, and quickly turned to see Mike hadn’t been aiming for him, and a member of The Toxins who’d tried to sneak up on Jeremy now had a large, fist shaped hole that went clean through his face. Mike jerked his fist free, sending out a small fountain of blood, and he wiped some excess grey matter and bone shards off his hand. _“For Christ’s sake,”_ he rasped, _“what the fuck do you want, dude?”_

Jeremy, although stunned by Mike’s tone of voice (and how different it sounded to begin with now), replied, “A...Are...are ya o-okay…?”

A grin crossed his face. Mike’s eyes betrayed the fact that it was borne of more murderous glee than anything. _“Never felt better.”_ He spun around and kicked someone in the gut hard enough to embed them in the wall behind him. Blood began running out of the crater after a couple seconds.

Jeremy stood up and began firing off at any stragglers. “Oswald’s gonna fire us for sure,” he said to no one in particular.

_“Ha! You wish,”_ Mike laughed. _“He can’t and_ won’t _fire us because he needs security guards to help keep this place up. And wouldn’t ya know it…”_ He trailed off when he realized something was missing. He stopped completely when he saw a shadowy figure to the left, running toward a hallway that led deeper into the pizzeria. _“Actually,”_ Mike said, “hold that thought.”

Francisco hadn’t gone very far before Mike body-checked him right into the wall. He screamed as the drywall and tiles fell on him, but quickly pushed himself forward into a roll, ignoring the stinging pain in his right side. He turned back to face Mike, whose eyes were still glowing yellow. By now, the wreath of ghostly fire had been lost, but it didn’t change his angry scowl. “Where do you think _you’re_ going?” he growled.

He stood up to full height and turned to look back at Mike. The fighting in the background seemed to siphon and fade as they stared for all of two seconds before Francisco replied, “Somewhere else.” Mike took a threatening step forward but was stopped from going further when Francisco asked, “Mike, real talk...do you have any regrets?”

This sudden non sequitur actually made Mike straighten up and lose his frown, but it didn’t last long. “What? No,” he said.

Then Francisco started...laughing. Mike was about to shut him up when he saw the lightning-bolt mask creeping across his face. “That’s a bull-faced lie and you can go fuck yourself,” Francisco replied. In a flash, he’d hit Mike with a ball of violet energy that sent him sprawling, and Francisco himself turned and ran into the darkened halls of the back of the building.

After color returned to his vision, Mike looked up to see Francisco’s retreating backside running further into the dim lights of the back halls. He pushed himself to his feet and could feel whatever was nestled in his soul flare up once more. “Not so fast, ya timeservin’ Judas, I ain’t done with you yet!”

He was about to hoof it after Francisco when he felt stinging wind fly by his head, and only became acutely aware of the sound of a gunshot after the plaster on the wall in front of him broke. Mike froze and turned back to look at another thug aiming at him, holding his pistol sideways: that was the only reason, Mike suspected, that he wasn’t dead. The gang member took one look at Mike’s expression and nearly dropped his gun as he turned around to run away with his tail between his legs.

“On second thought…”

* * *

The sounds of fighting wore away as Francisco retreated into the back of the restaurant. He was silently thanking whatever cruel God that was out there that he’d managed to lose Mike and that freaky looking puppet back there. Now he was slinking in between shadows through corridors, occasionally knocking on the walls as if he was looking for hidden doors. “For Christ’s sake,” he murmured to himself, “what’s with this Scooby-Doo shit, Old Man?”

He felt the Old Man growl in disappointment. _It wasn’t_ my _design choice, boy,_ he said, _it was a necessity to keep our business running. The current owner decided to rebuild and expand upon the old location._

“Gonna do more’n slap the guy if I ever see’im,” Francisco scoffed. He continued down the hall, knocking on walls before ducking through an arcade into another corridor. He began tapping on the walls there before the Old Man said, Wait... _I recognize this place, actually. I think you’re close, my boy._

“Oh, great,” he replied. Francisco sighed when he realized what was going on. He probably looked and sounded crazy, hunched over, tapping on plaster, listening for hollow sounds, and talking to someone that wasn’t there.

His thoughts were interrupted when he knocked on the wall, and the reverb sounded completely different than the rest of the hallway. It sounded like the sound was traveling through a pocket of air on the other side. He froze and stood up to stare at it. “...Holy shit, I think it’s hol-”

Francisco was abruptly cut off as his vision tunnelled and he felt himself swinging his right arm around. He grunted as his fist made repeated contact with the plaster of the wall, and by now, he knew the Old Man was piloting him forward. So, he let it happen. It took one, two, three swings with his fist before Francisco could finally blast the wall apart with a punch supercharged with violet energy.

The plaster and wood splintered into hundreds of shards that clattered around the room he had opened up. It was small and cramped, the only things inside being a few large crates along with strings of text that read “Happy Birthday,” and “Time to Celebrate,” covered in decaying streamers, rotted and forgotten. Francisco breathed out, though by now, it wasn’t really Francisco anymore. His body took a step forward before coughing and staggering back. He held his nose and coughed again. _“Aauuugh...It’s been so long, I’ve forgotten how positively_ rancid _some things can smell given enough time.”_ He sniffled and walked back in. _“No matter, anyway.”_

The room, as previously stated, wasn’t all that big; even smaller with all the crates and clutter taking up most of the room to walk. But that made it far easier for the Old Man to find what he sought, and it came in the form of a rotted appendage sticking out from behind a stack of boxes. His breath hitched and he shot himself forward to stare around the corner. Even in the darkness of the room, he _felt_ that he had come face-to-face with an old friend. He gasped, and after a pause, whispered, _“Ah...Is that you, my dear?”_

He extended his arm and felt around for a second before he felt its face. It was covered in dust and a light layer of mold, and slightly damp, but the Old Man knew it was a suit. He went down to the base of the neck and found the costume chewed up and rotted away, revealing the cold, nearly rusted metal underneath. _“Oh, no…”_ He breathed in and felt his way back up to its face. It was a familiar feeling, this mask under his fingers. It brought him solace. _“Yes, it really is you, darling. My God, you’re all torn up…thirty-three years hasn’t been kind to you, has it?”_

The suit gave no response. Its voice box had been torn out and turned into scrap metal years before it had been rediscovered, but in spite of it all, the Old Man moaned as if he’d found his own child crying on the sidewalk with a cut on her knee. Slowly, he embraced the ragged old animatronic, as if hugging the thing would bring it comfort. _“Oh, there, there. It’ll be alright soon enough,”_ he whispered. _“I’m here now. I promised I’d come back for you, didn’t I...?”_ His soothing still elicited no response, yet he continued, _“Soon enough, you’ll be part of our family. And then we’ll be happy.”_

With that said, he wrapped his arms around the aged animatronic and hoisted it up and over his shoulder. He grunted as he steadied himself back upright, then cracked his neck and walked out of the room. He turned back toward the way he came. He could still hear the sounds of gunshots and other assorted violence, but it was growing fainter now. He sighed. _“Wasn’t planning to go back out the front entrance anyway,”_ he said, making his way back. He picked up the pace when he got out of the hallway into a light jog, until he found the back entrance, in a corridor behind the Toyland area. It was a heavy steel and iron door, with an equally heavy lock on it. The Old Man brought Francisco’s free left arm up and aimed it at the lock before shooting another violet light straight into it, and with steely eyes and a defiant grunt, he kicked the door clean open. As he ran out into the darkness of the back parking lot and over the shipping and receiving lanes, he was only quite thankful that the manager didn’t have the foresight or finances to install automatic alarms.

* * *

It took a lot of punching, cursing, and broken noses, but eventually, Mike, Jeremy, and everyone else had chased The Toxins out of the pizzeria. Without Francisco showing up at any point after he disappeared, the gang quickly fell to disarray without any leadership. Jeremy and Mike had to keep the thugs running after pushing them out of the building proper, and that lent itself to a few cuts and bruises, but it was nothing the two of them couldn’t handle. Soon enough, everyone was safely back inside, and trying to repair as much damage to the building as they could with the limited materials they had.

“Well, that got scary right quick,” Freddy said to no one in particular as he adjusted another displaced table. “Thank heaven everybody’s okay now.”

Bonnie winced as Toy Chica applied mild pressure to an icepack on his head. “Speak fer yaself, bossman,” he replied.

Jeremy had been reclining on the stage, along with Foxy and Chica. “...What I’m wonderin’,” he began, “is why on God’s green Earth a buncha hoodlums would barge on in here if they weren’t bent on snatchin’ money, ‘cause the only things I found missing was a buncha toys, tickets, and some props an’ junk from the back rooms. Don’t think any of’em had the time or the guts to lift a cash register.”

“I think it’s pretty obvious they weren’t after money, Jeremy,” Chica said.

“Right, I get you, but like... _why?”_ Jeremy asked no one in particular. “And that Francisco dude, he didn’t look like he was on the same page as the others, but they was followin’ him like sheep follow their shepherds.”

“I’unno, but he’s a cunt, and I’m gonna kill his ass next time I see’im,” Mike fumed.

_“That...is an unnecessary...proclamation...Michael…”_ Everyone froze briefly, and turned toward the Puppet, who had been moving the heavier objects with its string, if not “overseeing” most of the work being done. _“Killing will...accomplish nothing…”_ it declared.

Mike frowned and looked from the Puppet to Jeremy and back and said, “Mm, I’unno, string-bean, last time I checked, stopping a guy’s heart who was poking ya with a knife made him _much_ less of a threat.”

_“Destroying this mortal vessel...this ‘Francisco,’ will only...delay the process…”_ it explained. It walked forward a few steps before turning to Jeremy, and by extension, Mike, and continued, _“He will...find...another...He will...return…”_

“Wait, wait, woah…” Jeremy blurted out, lurching himself forward and almost off the stage. “Y’all tellin’ us that kid...had...the guy ya after _inside_ him? ‘Cause that’s what it’s soundin’ like t’me.”

_“...Maybe...ask them…”_ it said, gesturing around to everyone else. Jeremy then realized that Foxy and Chica looked a lot more pale than usual, and Foxy was staring ahead blankly. He looked out across the main show area, and Bonnie and Toy Chica were holding each other close, asif scared to let go, and were looking at the Puppet worriedly. Toy Bonnie had sunk down in his chair, the top of his head nearly level with the table he was sitting behind, and both Freddys avoided his gaze.

“...How…?”

_“By much...the same process...that I put you through…”_ it explained. _“Only...I imagine...more invasive…”_

Jeremy squirmed. He didn’t like all the emphasis the Puppet put on the word “invasive.” The silence that followed was long, and nobody saw breaking it as a comfortable experience, but it had to be done sometime. “...I’ll be off to find Billy and Cherry, and tell them it’s safe if they haven’t exited their hiding place already,” Toy Freddy said, standing up from a chair. “Do inform me if I miss anything before I return.”

As he stood up and turned to face the back of the pizzeria, Toy Freddy suddenly noticed a figured running through the dark. Two, actually. Toy Foxy and Balloon Boy both burst into the light of the room, causing everyone to turn their heads and stare, and Balloon Boy himself dashed over to Toy Freddy and stopped right in front of him, panting heavily. Toy Foxy slowed down only to turn and look behind her, as if watching for some unseen pursuer; she was shaking violently. “Billy…? What’s wrong? You look like you were being chased by the devil himself!”

Balloon Boy could barely talk, but in between gasping breaths, he panted out, “Bad...news, sir! Real bad…! It...the wall...broken…! Someone...stole it!”

“Stole what, Billy? Who-woah!” Toy Freddy was interrupted as Balloon Boy grabbed his wrist and pulled him along into the hall he’d just left, followed by the original himself, then Chica, then Foxy, and finally Mike, who wanted to see what all the hubbub was about. They jogged after Balloon Boy, still dragging Toy Freddy behind him, until Toy Freddy, Freddy and Foxy stopped just a few feet away from a giant hole in the wall. “Augh! Shit te bloody bed!” Foxy yelled. “Smells like that one time in oh-eight when one’a te older buggers took two hours in te latrine! I can still smell it sometimes…”

The smell was so overwhelming that Freddy didn’t even try to correct Foxy’s use of language; he could only gag and choke, and quickly covered his nose, much the same as Toy Freddy. Balloon Boy and Mike could smell it, but they didn’t feel the need to use their clothes as impromptu gas masks. It _was_ pretty rancid, though. Mike was the one who was brave enough to move around the others and peek into the hole. The edges were rough, obviously lacking any finesse in getting this room open, and the inside was pretty dark; there weren’t any any light sources installed that he could see. He quirked an eyebrow and looked back at Freddy, and asked, “The fuck is this place supposed to be?”

Freddy, although still struggling with the odor, most likely due to his sharper smell being a bear and all, stumbled forward and bent over slightly to get a better look inside. “...I think…” He started coughing again before continuing, “I think it’s an old safe room. This place was built on the first location ever established fer the franchise.”

Mike swallowed and repeated, “‘Safe room,’ huh?”

“Yeah. I dunno the specifics on’em, but they _used_ to be places fer people in experimental suits to put’em on an’ take’em off. _Used_ to,” he explained.

“And that’s what I’ve been tryin’ to tell you!” Balloon Boy exclaimed as he ran up to Freddy, bringing Toy Freddy and Foxy with him. “The suit’s gone!”

Foxy’s eyes widened. “Te suit…? You mean te…?”

Balloon Boy nodded, his eyes wide. “Yeah. That same one.”

Freddy didn’t reply, and neither did the others. He only leaned on the hole in the wall, staring into its inky blackness, unfocused, breathing slowly. “Boss…?” Freddy looked over to his side, and at Mike, who was looking into the safe room too. “What kind of suit was...I mean, what got stolen?”

Freddy sighed deeply and stared straight ahead again. “Musta taken the ‘Bonnie Rabbit’ suit,” he said at length. “Only one that coulda been in here. They only made two, Fredbear and that one. And I think I know why…”

“...And…?” Mike said smalley.

“It be te cursed one,” Foxy muttered in surprisingly deep baritone. “Te one that evil proprietor’a Davy Jones’ locker used te kill te little’uns. Te reason we all live instead.”

There was a long, unbroken silence after that. Nobody said a word; they were too busy trying to think of what came next. Possibilities for what this meant and how it could be changed, tipped in their favor, or outright avoided all swirled through each other heads, but Freddy noticed that the longer they stood there, the more Mike’s eyes became unfocused, and the more his skin paled. He turned to look down at him.

“You alright there, Mike...?” he asked.

“...Yeah.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This is probably going to be the longest chapter centered around conflict I’ll ever write. It’s hard to write about people punching each other in the face over and over and still keep it sounding fresh. Anyway, the next chapter’s already been completed ahead of time, so I’ll post it earlier. Expect it to go live anytime from 5 days to a week and a half.
> 
> Also, >inb4 “omg, zalgo text, lol what cringe XDDDDD”


	8. Dead Man Found Alive and Well at Home, More at Seven

Hablo Park. Ellis remembered Hablo. Going there with his mom and dad was so much fun, but ever since he moved out and lived on his own, he found that going to the pier without them wasn’t the same. He looked around at the kiosks, the carneys bellowing their challenges to all who would listen, the light music drifting through the air, and realized just  _ how _ much better it would be if he brought company.

The sun shone down on his head, and for the first time in days, he felt its gentle warmth caress his long blonde hair. Getting out of the house for reasons unrelated to work was a fantastic change of pace.

“Excuse me?”

Ellis stopped staring up at the clear blue sky and the ferris wheel and rollercoasters towering over everything else and brought his gaze back down. A few feet in front of him was a middle-aged man in a plaid blue shirt and khakis. He stared the man up and down for a moment before he asked, “...Can I help you?”

“I think you have something that belongs to me. Would you be willing to return it?” the older man asked politely.

Ellis furrowed his brow. He couldn’t remember picking anything up in recent weeks, and yet...he felt as if he knew what the man meant. “I’m sorry,” he said, “But I think you forfeit that privilege years ago.”

The man was quiet, only staring at Ellis and blinking infrequently. Then he smiled. A smile that crept, quite literally, from ear to ear.

“Then you’ve chosen your fate”

All at once, Hablo Park melted away, reforming into a gargantuan room crisscrossed by steel beams and wires began to fall from the ceiling like rain. The man suddenly went dark. As in, his skin, his clothes, his silhouette went dark, and began to twist and reform itself into...something. Ellis suddenly found himself frozen to the spot; not out of fear, he he felt something tethering him down, refusing to allow him to move. He was forced to watch at the man’s outline became more...blocky. Angular and almost robotic, in a way. In time, the man had taken the appearance of a mechanism with an arm in the center, attached to a base with powerful hydraulics.

“And your fate is death.”

The arm extended, the hand at the end racing toward Ellis. He screamed as it made contact.

And a split-second later, his eyes shot open, heart pounding, gripping the pillow with iron fingers. After the shock died down, he tried to pick himself up from laying down. He gritted his teeth and suppressed a groan as he felt pain shoot through his body, and he felt his pacemaker strain to keep up.

Ellis was still a bit groggy, but looked around to find, to his relief, he was, indeed, in his room: the lights were off. It was still dark out. He could see the covers at his left shift slightly. He sighed and let his fears go. Everything was okay.

But damned if he hadn’t gotten a scare. And something like that was far too structured to be a simple night terror. Ellis moaned as he swung his legs over the side and stood up. He faltered for a moment, as he had lost all sensation in his left leg, and his vision was still decidedly without depth perception. He let his body warm up for a minute and limped into his wardrobe, and by the time he chose a bathrobe, he was walking upright like normal.

He was still a bit on edge and decided he should get himself a glass of water, or milk, or something to let his body work on instead of eating itself over what he’d experienced, so he slowly opened the door to his room and made his way down the steps of the house. He entered the living room, and through his peripheral vision, he saw the woods were peacefully still. The down payment for this house was something he’d saved up fourteen years for, but the isolation was worth it. Nobody could peek into his windows when he wasn’t home and see anything...strange.

Ellis let that tangent slip from his mind as he entered the kitchen and checked the refrigerator. He grimaced. “Out of milk again.” Oh well. That’s just how it was, having multiple dependents. He went to the cupboard, took a small glass and filled it with water, and remained in the kitchen, standing idly behind the counter. He drank periodically, swirling the water around absentmindedly as he stared out the back window. Ellis could barely remember the nightmare now; all he remembered for sure is the strange man in the full black suit and some sort of...machine.

Judging by the way his stomach turned when he tried to remember it, he guessed what his mind equated the machine to be.

But from the silence, a sound.  _ *Click, creak.* _

Ellis stopped and looked over his shoulder, to the right. The kitchen was on one end of the house while the dining room was on the other side, separated by the living room and stairway to the second floor. Next to the refrigerator was an entryway that led to a waiting room that circled right back around into the pantry.

_ *Click, creak* _

He stood there for a minute, frozen, trying to decipher what was happening. But soon, he sighed and set the water on the counter down. Ellis went over and stood at the entrance to the waiting room, staring into the dark. He put his hands on his hips. “You’d better not be stealing candy again, young lady.”

No response anymore. Ellis remained in the doorway, still glaring into the dark, where the door to the pantry was. 

_ “Caroline...” _

Two lime-green eyes suddenly lit up in the blackness on his left, accompanied by an indignant, “I’m not even close to the cupboard,  _ dummy.” _

Ellis spat and stumbled backward as he held his chest, and his face lost some of its color. He shut his eyes tight and then looked up, and the green eyes were still there. Ellis had to breathe for a minute before he scolded, “Caroline, don’t  _ scare _ me like that!”

“...Sorry.” Her eyes began to rise up though the darkness until they stopped at least a foot above Ellis’ head.

“What are you doing down here, anyway?” Ellis asked. “...Don’t tell me you’ve been  _ awake _ the whole night?” Caroline only remained silent, prompting Ellis to quirk an eyebrow and continue, “You wanna talk about it...whatever it is?”

_ “...Fine.”  _ Ellis nodded and held out his hand, which Caroline took, and he walked her out of the parlor, back through the kitchen. Caroline was seven whole feet tall, and Ellis saw, thanks to the lighting, she was dressed in the loose, fluffy pajamas Ellis had bought shortly after he helped her flee the rental service named after her. Or at least, her first name; to think it had been a little over fifteen years. Ellis took her into the living room, and they both sat down on the blue sofa that faced the back window, arched and massive, giving a wide view of the backyard.

It remained silent, however, until Ellis glanced back at Caroline after he was done looking outside at the swaying trees. He kept staring at her expectantly, until she breathed in, sighed deeply (and as overdramatically as ever), and said, “I had a bad dream.”

Ellis’ small smile faltered a little. “I’m sorry.” He reached over and started to rub her shoulder as he continued, “You remember what it was about?”

Caroline sighed again, keeping her eyes trained on the floor in front of her. “Not really,” she whispered, “but it was bad. I remember being kept in the Atom, hooked up to everything. I...I kept hearing screams…” She sniffled, but continued, “Screams. Hundreds of them...some were mine, I think, but…” Caroline wiped her eyes and the newly formed, glistening mist that was slowly trickling out. “But the worst...worst part...was that... _ he _ was watching...”

She kept crying softly, and leaned into Ellis to muffle her voice. Ellis himself held her close, rubbing the back of her neck and head the whole time, but he stared straight ahead. He knew he wasn’t getting the whole story; he could barely remember all but the most vital parts of his own nightmare, of course, but he felt in his heart that whatever Caroline had seen, it was ten times worse than what he’d experienced. There was a reason the nightmares were so specific, and something that specific, that  _ powerful, _ couldn’t be denied.

But he couldn’t tell her that. Not until morning. Not until he had more ears listening to him. So he sat there, and let her cry and get the pain out of her system. The water works stopped eventually, and when Caroline looked up, Ellis was still there, and smiling gently. “Well, it was just a nightmare,” he consoled her, “it’s over and done. It can’t hurt you now, can it?”

She shook her head and muttered, “No…”

“That’s right.” Ellis pushed himself to his feet and turned to look at Caroline. “Ready to go back to bed?”

In response, she held her arms up toward him, her face returning to a neutral state, despite what she’d just gone through. “Carry me.”

He sighed, and after a brief staring contest, Ellis relented. He picked her up bridal-style and began his trek toward and back up the stairs. “I can’t do this forever, y’know,” he commented. “I’m gonna be a crotchety old grandpa someday. What’re you gonna do then?”

Caroline cracked a wry grin. “Get Beatrix to carry me, of course. Besides, I walk up and down the stairs enough during the day.”

“Spoiled...” Ellis stated, “I spoiled you rotten.” This was only met with giggling from Caroline as he walked down the hall, to a door on the end and left. “Can you at least open your bedroom door for me, or do I have to work that out, too?”

Caroline looked from Ellis to her door and back for a minute before turning the knob and flinging it open with a gratuitous wave of her arm. He gave a quick remark of “Thank you,” before walking in. The rose-printed bed sheets were tossed up already, which left Ellis to set Caroline down and throw the blanket back over her. He bent down to kiss her forehead. “Good night, sweetie,” he whispered, “Love you.”

“Mm-hm.” Ellis stroked her hair for a minute before caressing her cheek one final time and he left her room, doing his best to close the door as gently as possible. He sighed as he walked back to his own room. Thirty minutes and it already felt like a day. When he got back, he crept his way back into his closet and removed his bathrobe, and as he walked back out, he saw the covers on his bed shift, and someone stirred.

“Mmm…Darling…?” came a voice as soft as the blankets, “Is that you, dear?”

“Couldn’t be anyone else, Felise,” Ellis said as he climbed under the sheets.

“...Darling, why on Earth are you awake? What time is it?” she asked.

“Had a bad dream,” he replied. “Caroline did, too.”

Felise propped herself up on her right arm to look at Ellis, now fully awake. “Oh, my poor Ellis…” she whispered soothingly as she brushed his cheek with her immaculate nails. “Are you better now, darling?”

“Yeah, of course I am…” he said, trailing off.

“Ellis, dear...?” Ellis snapped his eyes back to Felise, realizing he’d ended up staring at the ceiling on the opposite end of the room. He could vaguely see concern etched into her eyes. “...There’s something you’re not telling me, is there?” Ellis sighed and nestled his head deeper into his pillow. He tried to avoid her gaze for a couple minutes, trying to think of how he wanted to reveal things. If he said what he  _ thought _ was going to happen, she’d get worried, probably wouldn’t sleep, at worst, the mood swings would kick in.

“...Ellis…?”

He stared back at her, but remained silent before sighing, slowly. “You remember…” he trailed off again. “You remember what I told you about the first dream I had? About the Atom?” he asked at length.

“...Darling…?” Felise said tentatively, “...That’s not good. I don’t like how you’re phrasing that. What’s going to happen?”

“Nothing,” he replied without hesitation. “It doesn’t matter right now, sweetheart.” He smiled and continued, “We’ll burn that bridge when we cross it, okay? For now, we’re right here, together. Where we need to be.”

Felise was silent, the only thing audible in the room was the fan whirring away above them and Felise’s breathing. After the silence she breathed in and extended her arms, cradling Ellis by his neck and back.

“Hold me, darling,” she whispered.

Ellis smiled weakly and pulled himself closer to her as well, stroking her back. In that moment, there were no dreams or nightmares; just a peace he hadn’t felt since fifteen years ago. They both eventually passed into sleep once more, and Ellis didn’t stir again until morning.


	9. Assorted Housekeeping Two

Waking up was never pleasant, but having to wake up and immediately listen to Oswald Weatherby screaming over the phone was a whole new low for both Mike and Jeremy. The man sounded livid, and they guessed his incoherent ranting meant he wanted the both of them at work immediately. Mike nearly drifted off on the ride over, unlike Jeremy, who’d been up the whole night pacing across his room. Mike didn’t know why the man was so worried; there was very little chance of them getting fired, and even if they did, he was certain the Puppet had a “Plan B” to drag them back in.

But if it didn’t, he sure as hell wouldn’t complain.

They pulled in from Paulsin Boulevard and into the parking lot of _Freddy’s,_ and Jeremy was the only one who noticed the place was near empty, which he pointed out to Mike. “There ain’t even any cars in the employee parkin’,” he said, bringing the van to a stop. “Looks like there’s only...five other people in there.”

“Sounds great, let’s go home.”

Jeremy glared over at Mike as he popped the door open and climbed out. Mike followed, reluctantly, when Jeremy opened the door on his side and they both entered the restaurant. As soon as they entered, they saw that a lot of the structural damage had been left over from last night, and there were three of the day janitors doing their best to pick out loose and broken tiles and plaster from around the main area. Once they heard an extra pair of shoes crossing the floor, one of them looked up and called, “Sir, the other two’re here!” over his shoulder.

“Oh, thanks, you conniving little horseshit-shoveling _snitch,”_ Mike hissed under his breath.

No sooner had he finished that comment than Oswald himself stormed out from around the corner to a connecting hallway, and he was more red in the face than a ripe tomato sitting on the hood of a crimson Ferrari, and the boys could practically see the steam pouring out of his ears. **“Fitzgerald!”**

Jeremy clenched his teeth and snapped his gaze down to the floor. **“Schmidt!”**

Mike rolled his eyes and sighed dramatically while trying to keep the action well-concealed. Oswald stomped up to them, ashes going up in smoke on the Cuban he had in his mouth. “You boys have some **explaining** to do!”

“Why, what happened?” Mike asked sarcastically. Jeremy tried (and failed) to make him say anything else by use of hand signals.

“Don’t get wise with me, Schmidt!” Oswald roared, “We had to **close** on short notice because of you!”

Close on short notice? That meant there weren’t gonna be any noisy kids in the restaurant for their whole shift. Mike tried his best not to smile _too_ big, considering having fun as an employee was obviously forbidden. “Praise the _Lord,”_ he whispered to himself

“That doesn’t mean you two are off the hook, by God, far from it!” Oswald continued, “If the others have to clean up...whatever _bullshit_ happened last night that _caused_ this, then you’re gonna suffer with’em!”

“Will ya let us at least eat first?” Mike implored.

This was met with another puff of smoke from Oswald’s cigar and a flat, “No,” before he walked away. Mike watched him go and shrugged, and he headed back to the main area with Jeremy in tow, and made for the kitchen.

“Mike…” Jeremy whispered, “Where’re ya goin’?”

Mike only shrugged in response. “I’m fuckin’ hungry and if fat-boy’s got a problem with it, he can fire me.” He disappeared into the kitchen before Jeremy could keep the argument up.

* * *

Had it been two hours? Twenty? Jeremy didn’t know. All he knew for certain was that he’d been roped into throwing out chunks of plaster from the walls that had been broken off, and patching up the holes with new pieces. And the janitors that had been called in kept giving him the death glare.

He _wanted_ to say it was mostly Mike’s fault. He wanted to say he wasn’t the one who spilled blood on the tiles in the main show area; he wanted to say what actually happened, too, but he wasn’t ready for anyone to call a shrink on him. Either way, he finished helping with that job and quickly ducked into a nearby hallway to lose the two other people with him. Jeremy continued walking away until he caught a whiff of something...pretty nasty. Moldy, too. He kept walking, against all better judgement, until he realized he was walking toward the hole in the wall Mike had told him about.

It was still in the same place it was last night, he’d be terrified if it wasn’t, and the smell had died off a bit. He approached the hole, hoping to get a better look inside now that he wasn’t tired from being on the night shift and also getting beaten harder than the Red Wings in 1985.

“Hm? Who’s that?”

Jeremy shot his gaze up, as his footsteps must have alerted someone of his presence. That someone being none other than Shannon, who quickly poked her head out of the hole, and she sighed. Jeremy could have sworn it was a sigh of relief. “Oh, Mister Fitzgerald, it’s you.”

“Ah,” he said, tipping his hat. “Evenin’, ma’am. What’re ya doin’ in there?”

“You don’t need to call me ‘ma’am’, Mister Fitzgerald,” she replied as she took a few steps back and looked around the hole. “Anyway, I’ve just been taking inventory of the supplies we found inside.” She wiped her brow and added, “It’s been hell, if you’ll excuse my French.”

Jeremy quirked an eyebrow and looked over at her quizzically. “How so?”

“For everything I’ve found in there, I’ve had to run it through the company database to match it up with stock from nineteen eighty-four. I’m only thankful nothing was stolen.”

“...I thought one’a the suits got stolen?” Jeremy questioned back.

Shannon froze and immediately turned back around to face him. “...What?”

And it was then Jeremy immediately regretted bringing the problem up. “Uh…”

“What got stolen?” Shannon repeated. She didn’t sound angry, or even disappointed. There was audible panic in her voice.

“I, uh…”

“Mister Fitzgerald?”

Jeremy was quiet for a minute before, after scratching the back of his neck over, sighed and looked around to make sure no one else was close by. He walked over to Shannon and whispered, “One of the suits from the old diner got snatched.”

“By _who…?”_

Jeremy bit his lip, and opted to lie through his teeth, “Dunno. None’a the cameras caught it, but everything was quiet, then we heard the wall break, and when we checked, the wall was opened up an’ the suit was gone.”

The silence laid heavy and thick, and they both stood there, unmoving, for minutes that carried themselves like hours. Eventually, Shannon nodded, slowly, and turned away. “...I’ll...tell Oswald about that,” she murmured. She made good on that word, and left Jeremy alone to stare at the hole in the wall. He sighed, mainly because he couldn’t believe Shannon had bought it.

* * *

“... _What…?”_

“You heard me.”

Oswald’s gaze remained transfixed on Mike and Jeremy, the silence between them all only punctuated by the occasional popping of the gum Mike was chewing on. The both of them, Oswald, and Shannon were cooped up in a small, antiquated office. The walls were made of polished oak, as was the floor. Behind Oswald, sitting at his desk, were two cabinets containing hundreds of books, mostly record files, though there were a couple in the vein of “How to Run a Successful Business.” Jeremy and Mike sat in chairs in front of him, and Shannon stood at his right as well. The light coming from the window on Oswald’s right lent a dull orange glow to the whole room. Shannon had, apparently, informed him of the missing suit, and had called Mike and Jeremy to his office. He didn’t seem to be taking the news well, and Mike wasn’t taking his reactions well either.

“You better not be talking about the ‘Bonnie Rabbit’ suit,” Oswald growled.

“Sir, if I may-”

“Shut up!” Shannon recoiled and took a frightful step back before shakily adjusting her glasses. Oswald recomposed himself and sighed deeply. “...You two realize that if word of this ever gets out, that a _murderer’s costume’s_ been _stolen,_ the press is gonna have a field day with it.”

Mike scoffed and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms and legs. “But you’re still gonna cover the wall and cover it all up, right?” He smirked and flipped some hair out of his face before blowing another bubble. “‘Cause that’s what we’re known for, if I ain’t mistaken.”

Oswald stared at Mike before lighting another cigar and taking one puff. “Know what? Maybe you’re right. Thank God I’ve got that two-legged PR disaster out of my hair. Let someone else deal with it,” Oswald said. “Now both of you get out of my office and stop wasting my goddamn time.”

Mike had spent the past forty-five minutes mopping the floor, and by now his hair was glistening with sweat. He checked his watch. It was only ten after four. “This job suuuu- _ucks,”_ he muttered.

_“Psst.”_

Mike looked up to see Freddy peeking out from behind the curtains of the stage, motioning for him to come over to them. It was a sight better than cleaning the floors, so he naturally bolted over and ducked backstage.

“What’s up, boss?” Mike asked, gingerly propping himself up against a plastic column used for stage decoration.

Chica and Bonnie were waiting somewhere a few feet away from them, Bonnie entertaining himself with tuning his guitar. Freddy looked back at them, cleared his throat, and adjusted the cuff on his left sleeve. “You, erm...know that we’re scheduled for maintenance tomorrow, right, son?”

Mike scoffed and nodded. He remembered the talking-to Oswald gave him a few days earlier, because, apparently, no one else wanted to stay in the same room as the “animatronics.” He didn’t blame them. “Santa’s vodka-chuggin’ uncle made me _very_ well aware of that,” he replied with a grin. He looked up with a bit more curiosity in his eye. “Speaking of, how the hell do you they even do that kinda stuff to you, anyway?”

“They don’t.” Freddy crossed his arms. “Whenever we’re scheduled to be ‘upgraded,’ or otherwise get ‘worked on,’ we just wait for whoever’s doin’ the work to come into the back room an’-”

“Ice ‘im?”

Bonnie heard Mike’s comment and started snickering. Freddy, of course, sighed and rubbed his forehead. **“No,”** he stated flatly, “We wait for’em to come in, close the door, and then someone knocks the guy out. Then we get Puppet in to work their magic an’ he makes’em think everything’s taken care of.”

“And that means what to me?”

“You’re the one who’s gotta knock the next guy who comes in out cold,” Freddy explained. “They’ve been gettin’ the same...I think six folks t’come in an’ try to fix us, and I imagine their reports’re gonna start lookin’ pretty stale by now. You gotta do the honors this time to spice it up. Try an’ keep suspicion t’ the min’mum, y’know.” Freddy crossed his arms. “Believe me, I never liked doin’ it, but we have’ta keep up appearances.”

Mike nodded and sighed. “I get’cha, I get’cha.” He shot a sideways glance up at Freddy. “You're an oversized teddy-bear, boss,” he added jokingly, and left before Freddy could flash his eyes that spectral shade of blue.

* * *

Toy Foxy had been skulking around the same party room for over an hour and a half. Constantly circling through the shadows like a shark; she’d been watching Jeremy almost the whole time. Somehow, he hadn’t noticed her eyes glowing faintly in the dark (thanks in part to the otherworldly energy permeating both her and the entire location), which she was banking on as a conversation starter.

Of course, Billy, Chica, and Blue kept telling her to just “go up and talk to him” instead of using cheap tactics, but they didn’t _get_ it. _I can’t just go up and ‘talk’ to him,_ she thought as she poked her head out from behind another booth to get another look at him. _I don’t...I don’t_ know _him well enough to just go up and..._

She swallowed hard. _...Talk to him._

Jeremy had remained in the same seat he had been in since the nightshift started, still doodling away in his sketchbook, with his iPhone playing some of his favorite music from his childhood: _Bad, I Wanna Dance with Somebody, Heaven is a Place on Earth, The River of Dreams.._.the list went on. He had been scribbling body and hand poses that came to mind.

Normally, sneaking around through the dark wasn’t a problem for Toy Foxy, except for the fact that this time, she had her eyes mostly glued on Jeremy. That meant she wasn’t _always_ watching her step. Before she could even register what had happened, she felt something stop her from moving forward, and before she could change direction, she’d collided with the wall. Toy Foxy yelped, as quietly as she could, but the actual, dull _*thud*_ she made on impact was pretty loud.

Loud enough to catch Jeremy’s attention as his head shot up and he pulled out one of his guns from thin air. “Whozzat…?” he called.

Toy Foxy was frozen. If she came out of hiding, she’d be forced into conversation. If she didn’t, Jeremy would most likely find _her_ hiding in the dark like a creeper. “...Oh, God…” she whispered to herself.

She must have said that louder than she expected, because Jeremy scrambled up from his table and started moving forward. “I said whozzat? I _know_ I heard somthin’.” Toy Foxy continued to panic, trying to form a decent sentence that wouldn’t rouse any suspicion from Jeremy to indicate she had been watching him longer than he expected.

“‘I...I was watching you drawing…?’” she asked herself almost silently. “...No, J-Jeremy won’t like that, um… ‘I...got...distract-’ No, he won’t buy it...Maybe something about food…?” she muttered, “He could be hungry, um, ‘Hi, Jeremy, I was, uh, on my way to th-the kitchen-”

She froze abruptly when a bright white light punctured the darkness, and quickly revealed her huddled up against the wall she’d bumped into. Toy Foxy whipped her head around to see Jeremy holding a ball of white light in the palm of his hand. Jeremy seemed surprised at first, but quickly relaxed and dimmed the light of the sphere he was holding, and even smiled, albeit weakly. “Heya, Cherry, what’re y’all...what’re y’all doin’ down there?”

There were hundreds of thoughts racing through Toy Foxy’s head, chief among them being _“Ohgod ohgod ohgod, whatdoIdo?”_ After a minute of silence, her brain eventually stopped running itself in circles and she managed to focus. A little. Jeremy was still staring at her, though by now, he looked about ready to come closer and check on her. Toy Foxy blinked a couple times, and upon realizing there was no easy way out of this, took a deep breath and tried not to visibly shake.

“N...no…” she murmured. “I mean not...um…”

Jeremy quirked an eyebrow, but oddly enough, a smile crept across his lips. “Ah, right,” he said, standing straight up, “y’all not the talkative one.” He paused and then added, “Hey, y’all get up outta the dark, huh?”

Toy Foxy was still trying not to show she was sweating, but did as Jeremy asked, and took a couple tentative steps forward, then stopped. Jeremy motioned her closer after a second, and although still hesitant, she played along. After another few steps, she was right next to Jeremy, who quickly placed his hand on her shoulder and led her out into the well-lit area of the room; considering it happened so fast, she could feel her head spinning and struggled not to stare at him longer than five seconds. Jeremy sat back down at the table he’d been using and glanced back up at Toy Foxy. His neutral expression changed quickly. “Jesus, ma’am, ya’ll look pale,” Jeremy said with a small chuckle. “Or maybe it’s your fur. Hard t’tell.”

Toy Foxy felt her heart jump into her throat. She’d never been called “ma’am” before. Her delayed smile and laugh didn’t really help her nerves, either.

He didn’t notice her tense posture, but laughed after she did. Just to make him look like he was calmer than he was. Jeremy picked up his sketchpad and pencil again. He looked over at Toy Foxy, and pointed to the seat at his left, indicating for her to sit down. She gestured to herself, just to confirm if Jeremy meant her. He nodded, and she scampered into her seat.

And then she saw what Jeremy was drawing. His style was based in realism, with soft shadows, rough shapes, and liberal use of curves. The bodies he had drawn were human enough, but had varied shapes that could be seen through the lines: round, square, broad, skinny. She saw so much variation; it was an astoundingly different sight from all the kids’ drawings that plastered the walls “...Wow…”

Jeremy looked up from his work suddenly, his concentration broken. “Huh?” Toy Foxy quickly whipped her head around and covered her mouth, and tried to hide her face turning bright red. Upon seeing her reaction, Jeremy couldn’t help but chuckle to himself. “Relax,” he said, “I ain’t gonna bite ya. Takin’ an interest in art?”

Toy Foxy didn’t talk for awhile, but she nodded after a moment of silence, slowly looking back at Jeremy. She only hoped she wasn’t blushing as brightly as before. “It...looks nice,” she murmured. “I feel like I could...touch them.”

Jeremy’s eyes widened, and then he threw his head back and laughed. “Really? Shoot, my art ain’t _that_ good.”

“...I think it is…” Toy Foxy muttered.

Jeremy heard her, and paused a moment before saying, “Well, thanks.”

“Um, Jeremy?”

“Yeah?”

“I...I have a question-”

And then, just in time to cut her off, there was a loud _*CRASH!*_ from the kitchen, accompanied by the sound of panicked screaming, mainly from Chica, Toy Bonnie, Balloon Boy, and Freddy. Jeremy could also vaguely make out the word “fire” from the commotion. He bit his lip and looked back at Toy Foxy. “Can I, ah...get back to y’all on that?”

She blinked a couple times and raised her finger as to stop him, but relented in the end. Jeremy tipped his cap and turned, running out of the room as fast as he could. “Damn it, what did y’all do now!?”

Toy Foxy could only sigh as she watched him go.

* * *

The old complex was comprised of only one building and a moderately-sized warehouse attached to it. It had been condemned for years, and the most recent inhabitant that wasn’t a small animal was a man in his twenties, who, at the moment, had just kicked the front door down. He was holding an animatronic suit over his shoulder, which he carried into the back of the building until he came to another door, clad in stainless steel. Without hesitating, Francisco tore the door open with his free hand and stepped inside, into a circular elevator.

And so he went down, below the surface of Earth and exited into a large waiting room. Royal blue paint was peeling off the walls, but unlike the mass amounts of debris and clutter upstairs, everything in this room had remained mostly the same. The chairs and benches on each side had only been coated in dust, never moved. He entered the double doors just ahead of him and came into a large hallway that looked much like the waiting room before: covered in dust and paint coming off the walls, but otherwise untouched.

The Old Man trudged his way down the hall, then took a right at a four-way stop. He continued all the way down, took another left, then entered another door on his right. The room was dark, but at this point, Francisco was being directed, and didn’t need help opening the secret door in the back of the room. He slid his hand across the motion detector hidden in the wall. A small panel opened up, and he bent down to stare into it. A matrix lit up, though it stuttered at first, rusty from years of disuse. It scanned Francisco’s eye...and rejected him.

 _“Oh, my bloody God-”_ he muttered. The Old Man proceeded to set the suit up against the wall and stepped through it like a ghost. On the other side was a manual control panel, which he had a look at and began punching commands into. The wall slid to the side, and he caught the animatronic suit before it could hit the floor. He picked it up again, but only carried it a few more feet before placing it on some kind of conveyor belt. It was at that point the Old Man released control, and Francisco yelped and spat, swatting a bunch of bugs and carcasses off his body.

“Ew, ew, ew, ew, fuckin’ _disgusting!”_ he cried. After he felt calm enough to stop swatting at the arms of his jacket he looked back up and stared at the suit laying on the conveyor, which seemed to be connected to a much larger machine, but the room was so close to pitch-black he could barely see.

 _Magnificent, isn’t it?_ the Old Man mused.

“The rabbit, or whatever _that_ thing is?” Francisco asked, pointing to the machine.

_...Both._

Francisco scoffed and began to wander around, his eyes and sixth sense having grown used to the dark by now. “This is some workshop you got, old man.”

 _Yes. Where some of my most profound projects were conceived,_ he explained. _Ah...I remember them like it only happened yesterday._

“Whatever you say, pal,” Francisco replied. He took another look around before continuing, “So, by the way... _why_ did you have me deliver this scrap heap back here? You were never real specific on those details.”

In less than in instant, the Old Man went back to piloting Francisco’s body for him, walking around to a control panel for what could only be the massive machine in front of him. He pressed a few buttons, which brought a low hum up to sound throughout the room, and he kept working. After a few more button presses, The Old Man leaned over and pulled a lever down and back up.

Hundreds of lights turned on, revealing that this machine was more than just some sort of assembly line; there were tanks lining the walls, and the ceiling was higher than any other place in the building. Wires and tubes connected these tanks, all filled with something; they were made of steel, rusting but intact, but the sound of rushing liquid could easily be heard alongside the deep moaning of the machine.

 _“It still works…!”_ he exclaimed breathlessly. Without even a moment of hesitation, he ran Francisco's body over to the suit, and threw all its weight on the assembly line proper, and the conveyor belt did the rest. He watched it as it went along, through arches of steel and past robotic arms that at one point, built black miracles. This suit didn’t need them. What it needed…

Was the A.T.O.M.

Eventually, the suit slid into the centerpiece of the whole machine, a giant, spherical titanium chamber with hundreds of wires and hydraulics running into it. There was a glass pane built into the front that allowed a slightline inside, but by now, it was broken wide open. Francisco, and the Old Man, didn’t care. He saw the suit stop under the chamber, suspended a few feet over the conveyor, and it stopped abruptly. _“Now we finish the job!”_ he exclaimed, reaching for a control panel to his left. He punched in several keys, coordinates, and miscellaneous instructions, and heard the mean rev up from a low moan to a dull roar.

In seconds, the entire tank lowered itself on top of the conveyor, groaning from the stress of disuse. Two sides of the belt split on the left and right to allow the sphere to envelop the animatronic completely. Ten hatches opened up, from inside the machine, blue lasers pointing out, aimed at ten places on the animatronic suit: the forehead, the shoulders, upper chest, two on the lower chest, and two on each leg. The lasers hadn’t even remained still for a second before small, dagger-like arms shot out of the dark and lodged themselves into the fabric of the rotting suit; they started to drip with a dark-grey liquid.

 _“Excellent. We have enough Remnant, and then some,”_ the Old Man chuckled to himself. _“Of course, the process won’t be complete without some…”_ He turned Francisco around and walked a couple steps away before pivoting on his heel and blasting the whole A.T.O.M. with violet energy. It sparked, and coursed throughout the whole system, penetrating the machine without damaging it. The energy surged, and Francisco started cackling.

 _“Some doctoring of our own!”_ He poured more concentration into the blast, and the lights surged outward as the mechanisms of the A.T.O.M. continued to work. The liquid in the arms was still being pumped through, being touched, coerced, and corrupted by the Old Man’s will. By Now his cackling had subsided, replaced by his standard manic grin as he rasped, _“My greatest project. My return to form. My magnum opus.”_

The suit’s fingers twitched.


End file.
